A Demon's Dream
by Islagatt
Summary: The refinement of a soul, the birth of Ishougakure, outofplace humor. An unexpected affinity in the land of broken hopes and forgotten dreams.
1. Chapter 1

A Demon's Dream

Chapter One: Taking Suggestions

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or its constituent characters/plot.

The shadow-user blinked in blatant surprise. The words he had just heard… there was no way he had heard his friend correctly. It just couldn't be. The spiky-headed orphan was cheerful, relentlessly stupid, surprised by almost everything and ridiculously dense, above all that… He was loyal to his friends.

He had expected disbelief, denial, almost absolute rage from the blond dipshit, not this. Semi-dark blue eyes that held concentrated life and enthusiasm were now hardened, cold beyond all belief. The same mouth that stretched into impossibly wide smiles at the most horrific abuse the Nara could think of, was a thin line of clenched teeth. And worst of all to the strategist, he could tell that the boy standing before him was infuriated, enraged to a degree he'd never seen before, cold, calculated, loathing seeped from him.

"N- Naruto…" the chuunin stammered, the words were forced to compete with his sense of self-preservation in front of the blonde's display of wrath. "C-Calm down, you aren't being forced to go with us…" he tried to pacify the youth, deciding he really didn't want to be in the wilderness for an indefinite amount of time with the crazed kid.

_Go with them… and bring him back here! _

_If you don't go then who will, dumb-ass?_

_Not my problem, that angst-queen left on his own, by his own choice!_

_If you go…_ the second voice in Naruto's mind whispered back, the mental sound silky and seductive… it held the most dangerous thing of all, a promise. _If you go, we can kill him._

That tempted him, oh god how it tempted him. After everything that he had done for the village, every time he had beaten their precious, tragic hero or proved himself to be just as good, they still needed him back. The third voice entered his thoughts, the voice that interacted with the world. _Let's bring him back, the village will see us then, and they'll see how low their precious hero really is, they'll take us in his place!_ Damnit. He no longer had an option, and within the space of a second, the thoughts passed through his mind, he reigned in his rage and blatant envy, and was still nearly trembling with it when he smiled at the Nara again.

"Don't joke around Shikamaru, Sasuke is part of my team, I can't let him be kidnapped from the village without kicking someone's ass!" he exclaimed, and he was Uzumaki Naruto again, the lovable idiot. Or black sheep, as you preferred.

Nara Shikamaru was still shaken up by the display of temper he hadn't expected from his awkward companion, but he nodded assent and acceptance to the forced joy he let on. The two thusly left to gather their team, which went blissfully smooth. Naruto couldn't manage to look the youthful Green Beast of Konoha in the eye, unable to stand other people's sorrow, and Lee wore it around himself like a cloak, even while he did the same as Naruto did and tried to hide it behind a cheerful and energetic mask.

They gathered the remainder of the team, all the while Naruto was thinking, his mask responded automatically, almost by muscle-memory, in all the right places with all the same things he always said. But internally he was wondering, was it worth it to be cheerful and happy? It hadn't made any difference to anyone but him, it had only made him less happy inside, it was cowardly because he never looked at the problem itself, only a way to evade it. Of course the problem was that he had a demon in his belly, and that demon had destroyed the potential of this village. There wasn't a way to change that. But… there was always an alternative.

His reverie was disrupted suddenly as they were preparing to leave, the girl of his dreams, Haruno Sakura, she didn't even look at him as she all but begged him. "Naruto… Please, I'll never ask anything of you again-" _liar. You'd ask him anytime you had even a little problem, weakling,_ Inner Sakura told her even as she spoke "- Please, just bring Sasuke-kun back," More words were lost to the wracking sobs that consumed her speech.

The outlooks of Naruto winced as parts of him died, watching the only girl he ever cared for, even in the face of betrayal and refusal from the object of her idiotic affections, beg of him. He hated her suddenly, every bit of him did. He hated her weakness, for not even being able to offer herself to the mission. He hated how she still called him 'Sasuke-kun' but he was still only Naruto. Most of all he hated her for assuming, for implying, that he wouldn't have brought Sasuke back for her sake anyway, that she thought he cared so little that she had to beg on her knees for his assistance.

The other four of the Sasuke-rescue team shifted away, to give the two some privacy, expecting Naruto to say something like 'promise of a life-time'. _Speak your mind. How can she want to hurt us so much? I… hate… you… _Naruto's eyes shown with unnatural light, keeping their deep blue, but lit from within as he snarled contemptuously at her. "I'll bring back your master for you. I'll bring Sasuke back to Konohagakure so you can be his devoted lap-dog and careful follower again you stupid whore. But never, ever, speak to me again as if we were anything more than teammates." He turned his back on her, shaking visibly once more with heartbreak and rage.

His four friends all looked at him with confusion and worry, Sakura stared after his retreating shape with pain- pain and barely hidden gratitude. Akimichi Chouji called after him as he struggled with the others suddenly to keep pace with him "Naruto, wasn't that more than a little harsh?"

Inuzuka Kiba was about to add his own support to Chouji's question but Naruto interrupted, and they listened because he had never been like this before. "No Chouji, if I was ever her friend then maybe, but as it turned out, I was just an annoyance, so I figured I'd play the part she assigned me. Just wish it didn't take me so long to figure it out…"

Kiba considered what he said for a long moment, and couldn't think of anything to say, so he sped past Naruto to the front of their group, Chouji fell in line behind the two and Shikamaru slipped behind him, Hyuuga Neji brought up the rear, considering the sudden change in Naruto. The Naruto who turned Neji's life around was different from this one, but if it was ok for Neji to change so suddenly… Who was he to say that Sasuke's defection wasn't allowed to have a similar effect on the blond?

"Focus on the mission everyone, let's bring our traitorous 'hero' home," Naruto tried to keep his comrades focused on the job at hand, but the venom in his voice was distracting even more.

…

Naruto closed his eyes tightly as it happened again. Another teammate gone suddenly, another friend of his that Sasuke killed. He bid farewell to Kiba in his heart, and then to Shikamaru. Running on further with no thought but to do the mission and go home. Between his target and himself there was the bone-user, between himself and home there were four graves, between himself and everyone there was Sasuke. Sasuke, who killed his friends, Sasuke who stole his heart's desire and gave her not a second glance, Sasuke who stole the smiles and reverence and acknowledgement he –Uzumaki Naruto- worked for.

A hand seal and a shout later a swarm of Naruto clones assaulted the enigmatic bone-user, and seconds after that they were clouds of smoke. Again the clones and a rapid assault, and smoke, and it was over. Naruto wasn't making any progress but he wasn't giving everything to the fight. Before he knew what was happening Rock Lee had landed beside him and sent him on his way, the green beast had heard the harsh farewell he gave to Sakura, and glared at the blonde as he told him to leave after Sasuke again. Naruto ran and said goodbye to Lee, even if he survived, the eyebrow-freak's devotion to that cherry blossom slut would have meant their friendship would be utterly destroyed.

Naruto almost wanted to cry over the loss, but he couldn't let it distract him as at that moment a flash of blue in the distance ahead and that Uchiha clan symbol drew a low growl from Naruto. With renewed vigor he launched himself after the power hungry kid. Sasuke jumped over a few rocks and into a cave, Naruto followed on the ground, his eyes already lit up again, slit-pupils widening as the dark cave surrounded him. The dull repetitive sound of his sandaled feet meeting the hard stone floor and the thin layer moisture thereupon, pushing his mind into an almost trance state.

As he slipped out of the normal mindset, Neji was beside him, standing still but keeping pace, this confused the blonde for a moment before the apparition spoke, harsh Hyuuga eyes narrowing at him in an almost accusatory fashion. "_Naruto,_" the voice echoed in the cave, or maybe in his mind, he wasn't sure at this point"_you have better eyes than me, only you can save Sasuke from the darkness he is in_" all he had given was a nod at the time. DAMNIT, he had left his friend to die and hadn't even said farewell, he squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth.

"Neji… I'm sorry, don't die, please, whatever's listening, don't let any of them die." His head snapped up, focused on the point of light before him. "I'll bring him back for you guys, I'll bring him back to those pigs and that bitch for all of you." And then he burst from the cave and into the valley of the end.

…

If Uzumaki Naruto or Uchiha Sasuke had been interested in that kind of thing at the moment, they would have had to admire the majestic beauty of the Valley of the End, the first and second Hokages staring out away from Konoha, barring the progress of invaders. A part of Naruto's mind sneered rudely at the two, even they in their infinite wisdom ignored the Uchiha, ignored the threat that would betray and destroy Konoha, and they ignored the Kyuubi-carrier. He attempted quickly to calm himself, they were dead, and it was not their fault that things were the way they were.

"SASUKE!" the raspy voice echoed to the black-haired egoist. The conceited bastard in question turned his bizarre face towards Naruto, whose own features were rapidly turning to favor the bestial element of his self. Piercing blue eyes locked onto mismatched brown and gold ones before the voice continued. "The only way you're leaving this valley, is by going back to Konoha, dead or alive, whole or shattered, Konoha wants you back, and I will drag you there."

Sasuke quickly dismissed the blonde's words as his usual bravado, still… this was a chance to gain the Mangekyou Sharingan, he couldn't pass that up. "Naruto… Konoha has nothing for me, I haven't gotten any stronger there, Orochimaru is offering me power, power that I need to-" He was unexpectedly interrupted.

"To kill your brother; yes I know, I've heard it before, Freak-boy" Naruto leveled a cold glare at him, his mind withdrawing itself to the place where Kyuubi stayed. Naruto stared at the black abyss beyond the cage. "_Bastard fox! I need your chakra, and I'll need you to keep supplying it, but this is my fight, don't think for a minute I'll give you control._" Naruto grinned savagely, insanity writ across his face as his shadowed eyes started to look up towards his opponent. "_But you're welcome to watch, and if it comes to it, I'll kill him before he can beat us._" He brought his shining blue eyes up towards Sasuke, and smiled evilly. "I was hoping you'd give me the chance, you've had this coming for a long time, bastard"

Sasuke was about to retort when Naruto vanished, his Sharingan activated on its own a split-second before the punch hit him, he blocked it but the diverted hit cracked the statue under their feet, Naruto struck faster with another punch, it too was diverted, into the air, but before the black-haired boy could react Naruto's knee found his stomach and burrowed into it, almost throwing the boy back, but Naruto's claws dug into Sasuke's forearms and held him from escaping with the force of the blow. The blonde reared his head back and brought it crashing forward in his first armed attack of their fight.

Interlude: Analysis of Konoha Shinobi Equipment: Hitai-ate

The metal of a hitai-ate was thin, and rather flimsy, it was curved to fit to the bearer's forehead. Interestingly, it was primarily the material's ability to be reinforced by chakra that made the device useful at all, chakra pushed directly into the metal gave it the strength it needed to actually block a kunai or shuriken. But since a strike to the forehead that couldn't be blocked was one that was unpredicted, a technique like the Kawarimi no Jutsu existed for it. The Kawarimi was put on an object expected to remain somewhere nearby and triggered automatically when damage was suffered. So when the hitai-ate was hit, it automatically hardened with the bearer's chakra.

End Interlude

The difference, in the technique's senses, between a kunai and a forehead was nil, so Naruto slammed his head against his opponent's skull with essentially a two-inch-thick piece of steel slapped on his forehead and all of his Kyuubi-boosted strength. Sasuke crumpled under the blow, collapsing with a bleeding spiral-leave cut into his forehead. The blue-eyed demon stepped back from the bleeding, momentarily stunned fighter and glared with unbridled hatred. Clones exploded into existence around them, at least eight of them, with no seals or words from Naruto. The crowd of Naruto clones ran towards Sasuke and cried in unison "Naruto Bunshin Hitai-Ate Rendan!" the real Naruto grinned savagely as his clones smashed the bastard's face in, pushing their chakra into the false foreheads as they struck. None of them left the same mark, but he was badly bruised and battered by the time the last one poofed from existence. He lay still for a moment until Naruto grabbed his collar and lifted his battered form into the air.

Chakra-laced sandals brought Naruto to the edge of the waterfall, he hefted Sasuke into the air and formed the Rasengan in his right hand, on his own, the Kyuubi's wrath and laughter spurring him to the momentary feat, before he plunged the sphere into his former friend's chest. The blow spun him wildly around as he went down into the water below with a terrible explosion. Naruto threw himself off the edge of the waterfall after the bastard.

Sasuke grimaced painfully under the water, whatever that attack had been it hurt like hell. He grinned viciously, as he watched Naruto land on the surface above him, the pain didn't matter, it was quickly willed away as the self-induced suffering of the curse seal flowed through his shoulder and neck in its place, the flames-shaped blackness stretched over his cheek and across his features. Arms and legs pumped swiftly, bringing him closer to the surface and closer to the unaware blonde, his hands quickly tore kunai from his holster.

The black-haired boy burst from the water, a fine mist spraying in all directions as his hands emerged, quickly locking the kunai behind his opponent's knees, through the fragile joint and into the hard bundle of flesh and cartilage that formed the kneecap. Naruto's scream of outrage and pain filled the valley even as Sasuke hauled the rest of his body from the flowing river, hopped and kicked off from Naruto's orange-clad back, the process caught a weak seam in the old jacket and the red spiral symbol tore off as he flew backward from him.

Even before he was able to land he was forming hand seals, a cry of 'Katon: Housenka no Jutsu!' followed the blonde's scream, the fast-moving fireballs quickly fanned out leaving no room to escape 'Katon: Goukyakuu no Jutsu', the blonde didn't know that he'd had time for the seals yet, but even while he tried to drag the kunai out of his knees the massive fireball consumed his position. Sasuke stood back on the bank of the river, smiling wickedly with the flame-marks over his features, his lips and face were lightly singed from the rapid overpowered fire-techniques, but it had been worth it to see Naruto collapse.

Apparently though Sasuke missed the twin flares of chakra, one normal one Kyuubi's, as two clones pulled the kunai from his knees and pulled the burnt and bleeding body back to the surface. The two clones again dissipated rapidly and Naruto's form floated into Sasuke's view. The genius' eyes widened suddenly as he felt a second chakra totally subsume all of Naruto's, the damage to his legs mended before the Sharingan, frighteningly quickly, and the fresh combatant, in singed, torn, bloody clothes stood with cold hate in his eyes. A part of Naruto was still in his mind and it had to know…

"Sasuke! Why are you doing this? Why are you going to Orochimaru, did all of our time as team seven mean nothing to you!" He was almost bawling as he said it, he needed to know that there was some of the Sasuke who was his brother still in there, if there wasn't, if Sasuke was so gone…

"No. It had meaning." His words sparked hope in the blonde's mask, even as the tone he used made his feet sink into the water as his heart grew heavier. "I actually now consider you to be my closest friend." His spirit lifted "That is why I must kill you. To gain power," and it all crashed back down to the earth, broke the surface, fell further, it took most of the container with it, but it left some twisted remains in the blonde's torso, where once a heart had dwelt.

He stood still and waited, he knew what was coming next, he was tempted to let it, put him out of the villager's misery he thought. But even now, he couldn't break his word, it went against his Nindo (sp?). His eyes didn't track the seals, but they saw the familiar crackling blue energy that surrounded his hand. Kyuubi's chakra wrapped around his weary body, blood red light surrounding him like a cloak, the Rasengan took shape in his right hand, with nothing but his own brutish will driving it into the proper spheroid shape, and he charged forward to meet his rival, hurling the Rasengan forward at the same moment as Sasuke lunged with the chidori, its shrill cry competing in volume with the howling wind of the Rasengan.

The two attacks could only cancel each other out. Fighting one against the other never got them anywhere, they could see that. Sasuke was a genius, one look at the orb and he knew its infinite surfaces would last longer than the chidori's cutting effect would. Naruto wasn't stupid, he aimed to make sure Sasuke wouldn't be able to fight anymore.

The attacks never met.

Neither opponent looked to the other's jutsu to try and attack.

Naruto aimed to Sasuke's belly, but the Sharingan gave Sasuke enough warning and he threw himself into the attack, lifting off the water, into the air, Naruto's attack bit through the air and he was pissed just before half of his face was burned off by the chidori's light touch. He knew it was coming but the blue fire punching through his lung and out his back hurt like hell, and then the energy destabilized and released, blasting his back to so much shredded meat and ribbons. Four clones had already sprung out digging very real kunai into Sasuke's knees and shoulders, drawing a shriek of indignant disbelief and horrified pain from the Uchiha-heir. A final clone smashed the villain's face with its Hitai-ate, exploding into so much smoke as the impact sent Sasuke sprawling, unconscious and incapacitated on the ground.

Naruto slumped to the water, blood filling his useless lung, 'til he fell over and it emptied itself into the water. At some point the world went dark again, and he assumed he died. Despite his best intentions to the contrary, he was dead, that considerably pissed him off.

Hatake Kakashi stared at the two unconscious genin and rapidly moved to pick them up. He stared at Naruto, the hole in his chest looked like he was dead, but blood didn't flow like that in death… He threw a blood pill into Naruto's mouth and forced him to swallow it, and picked him up as gently as he could, slinging him over a shoulder before turning to Sasuke.

With sorrowful eye he looked upon the better off shape of his most horrible mistake. He slung Sasuke callously over his other shoulder and dashed towards Konohagakure, his tracking hound Pakkun in close pursuit, staring wide-eyed at the bleeding body of Naruto, and the savage damage to Sasuke's body. The little dog wondered silently _Just what are those two?_

Hatake Kakashi was wrapped up in his own thoughts as he carried his charges back to the village, mentally screaming at himself. _How could you not notice it! That Uchiha kid was only ever concerned with his revenge, and there was no way that even you could have brought him out of that. Even Naruto, his only friend, couldn't save him from himself. I can't ever let this sort of thing happen again, this is all because I focused so much on Sasuke's training. Poor Sakura's gone off and only just begun her training, and Naruto's found his own sensei. _Stopping his thoughts before he drifted into self-pity, the masked jounin quickened his pace just a bit more, throwing caution to the wind in his bid to get his students to the hospital in time.

Sasuke was drifting through his own reverie, unconscious as he was. _I lost… even with all that power Orochimaru gave me, I lost, to an already beaten-down dead-last from that village. If he'd wanted to kill me there wouldn't be enough of me left to fill a shoebox… Wait why didn't he kill me? Oh, that's right… I'm like his brother, he couldn't kill me because of that, but he'll die because he couldn't kill me. Funny how that works. But I lost… they'll take me back to Konoha now. And after that I'll never be allowed out of the village again, if I couldn't beat Naruto then I'll never beat those ANBU they assign to me. _

Realization hit him like an especially large and sharp brick. Or maybe that was his head. That dobe's headbutt really hurt after all. It didn't matter anyway.

His entire life's goal was effectively made impossible.

He could not now, nor ever in the future expect to defeat Uchiha Itachi.

There was a long minute of silence in the blue-clad genius' mind as he considered that. He started to panic, why wasn't he worried about that? Shouldn't he be depressed to lose his life's ambition? But… he didn't. Uchiha Sasuke felt nothing at the thought of being freed from his goal, except relief. His own reaction perplexed his conscious mind, and he took the remainder of the trip to contemplate it.

Unlike the other three, Naruto's conversation wasn't only with himself. If his mental body hadn't been a copy of his physical one he would have been pacing across the yellow-lit facility. For a moment the mental body of Naruto drank in his surroundings, pondering their meaning.

The orderly pattern to the tubes and panels in the walls and ceiling gave the blonde a distinctly tech-ish feel. The standing water all around gave him the feeling that it would eventually fill up the place. He noticed that actually the water was considerably higher than it had been upon his last visit, when his sensei pushed him off a cliff, maybe waist depth now. The yellow light seemed sickly to him, and its contrast with the rest of the world made him ever more curious.

**Done enjoying the scenery, brat?** The Uzumaki child's attention was drawn to the massive gates that dominated the room, and the mask of gleeful wrath that peered down on him from the other side. Naruto groaned and closed his eyes, attempting to tune out his monstrous resident. **Hey, don't ignore me you little punk. I'm actually rather surprised by you…**

"I wanted to kill him," he said simply, in answer to a question the Kyuubi hadn't asked. Perhaps he was only admitting it to himself now?

**Which is why I was impressed. I always thought you were too soft to pick up on that thirst of mine.** The demon laughed at Naruto's swift, but feeble denial.

"I'm not like you, he was just a bastard that needed to die." He said with cold certainty.

**What did he do that the villagers never did to you? He actually was better to you than they were.** This was rapidly confusing the blonde. Hadn't the Kyuubi been trying to convince him that killing Sasuke was a good thing to want?

"He betrayed the village, and he betrayed me…" he said, uncertain to the direction of this thinking.

**The villagers betrayed you every time you offered kindness and they threw it in your face, container or no, you're still one of them, they had an obligation to you and they went back on it. Didn't they?**

"The village… betrayed me?"

**Of course they did. Humans are fickle.**

"Funny thing for a demon to say." The blonde's tired response was quick, he wasn't dead yet, just exhausted.

**Hmph. Still that insolent tone. I had planned to enlighten you a bit but you don't seem ready for it, anyway our time is being cut short. You'll hear from me real soon, brat…** the demon's voice and image faded away with its haunting laugh. And Naruto woke up shivering.

The Village. The stares, the hate, their blind enmity, it stung and hurt more than the chidori had. Kakashi had no idea how Naruto dealt with it for so long, the blonde had put up with this back when he had been a prankster, and now he was subject to it after nearly losing his life to save their precious genius too? It was shocking, even to the jaded jounin sensei to see it. But Kakashi didn't give it any of his mind as he made for the hospital.

Sasuke was still out cold, not having a demon to help him recover, and actually he was becoming quite pale from his still slightly flowing wounds. Naruto was not doing much better, he wasn't bleeding so profusely anymore from any of his wounds, the blood pills had been doing their work so he didn't look as pale as the already mostly sunless-Uchiha did. In fact he was already swimming in and out of consciousness , enough to receive the cold glares from the villagers, and the few muttered remarks even he could pick up.

The fox-damned child couldn't bring himself to care, he was numb everywhere, and the world was rapidly getting dark again, with his inner coils burnt and damaged by overusing the Kyuubi's chakra, the demon had its hands full keeping him from dying, much less repairing the gaping hole in his torso. Semi-sleep, or at least enough cognitive dismissal built up again in him that he tuned out light sound and touch.

So it was the smell that got to him when moments later he was in a disinfectant-stink filled room that he realized he wasn't moving anymore. He was filled with confusing sensations of warmth and god-awful pain. Strange sounds abounded around him, numerous frantic voices layered just over those countless machines (he assumed they were machines). The sound was enough to make him curious and he let out a faint rasp that he meant to be a sigh, his eyes trying to open to take in the room around him.

A close by voice cried out in shock 'Sweet kami-sama… he's _awake_!' The blonde wanted to sit up and glare at the speaker and say 'Of course I'm awake, why wouldn't I be?' By now of course the drugs feeding into his body were making him forget the pain, but the raspy gurgle he heard of his own voice, and his body's lack of response to his intent gave him a good idea as to why he shouldn't be awake.

_Oh yeah, I forgot about that hole in my lung. Huh. Must've slipped my mind…_ More shouting sounded over him, much louder now that he heard Tsunade's voice enter the fray. Her sudden presence made him feel quite a bit safer actually, and sleep again claimed him.

Tsunade was beyond pissed. There were not words in any lexicon with which to describe the rage the fifth hokage felt at that moment. She wanted to kill Orochimaru, but that desire had been present for years already, currently she wanted to unman and dismember Uchiha Sasuke –and his older brother too, just for good measure. To smash Nara Shikamaru's head in for getting Naruto into a position where he could be so injured, his lifelong friend Chouji for his antidote having prevented her from getting to Naruto sooner, the Hyuuga branch member for calling Shizune away. She wanted to deliver swift and violent punishment on Naruto himself for getting injured, and Haruno Sakura for guilting him into a promise that nearly killed him and in the process taking away one of the most important purposes in his life.

Most of all she was angry with herself, that she couldn't do everything at once. More so that she couldn't heal the little boy she loved like a brother and hold him to say that everything was alright. She hated to think what was happening to the boy right now, and being able to firsthand see his wounds, she was nearly paralyzed by the sight of so much blood and bits of flesh.

Like the trained medical professional she was, she took charge of the situation and began to work on her patient, offering prayer to the demon in his belly that he would live.

At the same time, Haruno Sakura sat outside Sasuke's hospital room, unable to help the medic-nin inside. She looked to her right, the bench in front of Naruto's room was still occupied by Kakashi, who was sullenly staring at the floor. She couldn't think of anything to say and decided to take up her sensei's hobby, picking apart the false randomness of the tiles that made up the floor. A machine made them, that denied randomness, but for the life of her she couldn't find the pattern.

She sighed, the sigh became a light chuckle that turned quickly into a sob. The tile pattern on the floor forgotten, she thought to the departure of her teammates. Sasuke had always refused her, with the same look and statements, but Naruto had never been deterred by anything she said before, and she had been more ruthless with him than Sasuke had been with her. It hurt her, deeply, to know that she'd destroyed that little bit of him, love or no he was her friend. Or he had been. She spent most of her time so far chasing Sasuke, who would never love her, ignoring the one who always had and now was repulsed by her, in short, her potential of romantic involvement with any of the possible candidates, was gone.

Kakashi, on the other hand, was trying hard not to think. He was reminded why he never took students, because it meant he had a liability. He had failed two of his students and had never understood the third. Even worse, it was entirely his fault (in his mind at least) that Naruto was going to die. He knew about the Kyuubi, but the chidori was his own attack, and the damage had been horrible to him, he was still covered in blood from the two monsters he had brought back.

He leaned back and smacked his head against the wall, a hand reaching laconically into his equipment pouch, and withdrawing (to Sakura's astonished disgust) his old favorite volume of Icha Icha Paradise. The jounin stared from his single open eye at the words, but he couldn't read just then. He slumped his arm back down and closed the book, tucking it away and balancing a kunai on his fingertip with his chakra. He lifted up his headband and let his Sharingan study the chakra, wondering if watching something so starkly natural would give him insight into the mechanical flow of the tiles' pattern.

"You're absolutely right. They do betray me, constantly." Said a still floating and incapacitated blonde to no-one he could see.

**Brat, would it kill you to clean up in here a little bit? Open up the floodgates kid, there's too much in your mind right now.** The demon called annoyingly.

"Did you pull my thoughts here just to complain about the décor in my head? I have some rather serious moping to get to if you're just going to dick around with me." The blonde replied hotly.

The demon on the other side of the cage snorted contemptuously. **Ditch the attitude, boy. Carrier or no, your mind is still fragile in here. But incidentally that isn't the only reason I wanted to talk to you. **The demon's face became visible again. **Like I said before, you impressed me, so I'm gonna enlighten you a little bit, about the differences between demons and humans- Shut up and listen brat!** The demon's last outburst came as the prone Naruto looked about to speak.

**Now as I was saying. Demons are, inherently, beyond the scope of logical human power, its impossible for a demon to be killed by a human directly, why do you think I was sealed in you? **Naruto again looked about ready to answer the red beast. **That was rhetorical, no need to answer. **The demon actually gave a semi-depressed sigh, why did he have to be locked in this _idiot_. **Regardless of the difference in capacities, demons do not, and cannot change, grow, or act in any way beyond what they were created as and for. Demons do as demons are, humans on the other hand, do as they choose. They're growth is totally unlimited, their fate is determined by themselves… marvelous isn't it?** There was something that might have been envy in his voice as he spoke, and for once, Naruto couldn't easily think up something smartass to say. After a moment he spoke again. **Demons, therefore, get the short end of the stick in terms of how they live. They have the potential for eternal life with no change, humans have brief life within which they can realize unlimited potential.**

"So why did you attack the village and make the fourth die to ruin MY life!" The blonde couldn't take it anymore, it seemed that logic was rapidly abandoning both him and the demonic fox.

**Hmm. I had thought we'd be past that little bit. Oh well, not for the first time you have disappointed me, Uzumaki Naruto. We'll just see if you meet my expectations in the future, but I won't hold my breath. **The fox's face started disappearing and the water filling the area began to sweep the blonde out of the room in a current that he couldn't totally explain.

"BASTARD FOX! ANSWER ME!" the cries echoed through the halls of Naruto's mind as he was pulled out of the dreamscape.

His mind was rapidly returning to consciousness, the drugs being pumped into his body did nothing to stop it, the hole in his chest _still_ refused any and all forms of treatment, blood was being fed into his body from a bag, several actually, and was pouring out the glaring wound. Kyuubi had been keeping him alive despite it, but now he decided to let Naruto heal it himself, which was why he was rendering the sedatives inert in the boys body. As his mind began to return to the real world, a low growl began from his throat, and quickly escalated from there.

Naruto woke up. And the world was pain. He ripped his own throat apart with the scream of agony the left him, and didn't care, chakra billowed around him again and his eyes were terrifying with their slitted pupils and piercing light.

But the chakra, and his eyes, were blue.

The blue chakra enveloped the container completely, expanded out for a moment and dove inwards again. Even if Naruto never consciously understood how the Kyuubi used its chakra to heal him, his body knew the process, and it repeated the treatment on his form, this time using the body's chakra and not the Kyuubi's.

Kakashi had burst into the room upon hearing the scream and was now staring wide-eyed at the sight, as was everyone in the room, of blue light wrapping together newly forming flaps of flesh, reinflating the lung as it formed itself anew, blood vessels, muscle, bone, cartilage all reformed in the storming blue chakra in his chest. Finally the flesh reformed over the wound, a little pinkish, but skin nonetheless, similar rapid regeneration seemed to melt his other scratches and burns, and the horrendous damage to his back. Finally the mass of scar-tissue his face had rapidly become shuffled off, leaving new muscles open to the air for a moment, only to rapidly have those shielded from sight again behind a fresh layer of pink skin, the whisker marks matching the other side of his face with eerie precision, his right eye blinked open, its light mirroring his left. The scream ended and he fell backwards, breathing heavily, as if testing the new lung. However, despite his exhaustion he remained conscious, if only barely.

A silence descended on the room, and after a long moment during which most of the doctors had backed away from the demon-child. After an uncomfortable minute, Tsunade broke the silence, Kakashi was at her side, Sakura wanted to be there but his words still rang in her mind. "Naruto-" There were a million questions she wanted to ask, what did you just do, are you ok, what about the Kyuubi, and how dare you almost die on me you thankless little brat, just to name a few. She didn't get a chance to however, as the blonde spoke first. The voice should've been rough from all that screaming as he healed his massive damage, but his throat had healed even as he was laying there.

"Did I kill him?" He asked before anyone could say much to him. Tsunade was touched, that even after this he'd still be so concerned for that traitorous bastard… She shook her head slowly, preparing to speak when the blonde caught her gesture. _Damnit. I wanted to kill him._

"He'll be fine Naruto, so will Chouji and Neji, Akamaru and Kiba will be in the hospital for the rest of the week and Shikamaru was already released. It's alright Naruto, everyone's ok." Hatake Kakashi glanced at the hokage with a raised eyebrow but then turned back to his pupil.

"Mostly everyone, what about you Naruto? What the hell was that just now? I mean, I have seen the Kyuubi heal you, but that wasn't the Kyuubi's chakra." Tsunade gave the masked jounin a stern look but didn't debate the point.

Naruto blinked slowly and thought about it, his eyes didn't hold that awful light they had a moment ago. He thought to the conversations he had had with the demon, but it wouldn't do for normal people to hear he could speak to the fox, that sort of gossip would make the wrong impression on people. He sent a glare at the cowering medical staff. Tsunade caught it and sent everyone packing, certain that she could handle his medical needs herself. He waited 'til the door was shut again before he spoke, and when he did finally his voice was almost sullen.

"Kyuubi said that I impressed him." He looked at both of them with all the savagery and hatred he could muster, not directed towards them, for the blonde thought Sasuke alone was to blame for his flight, though he blamed the damage to his body on Orochimaru and that thrice-damned curse seal. His eyes lost the hate, they were filled with contented madness as the light reappeared in them. "I impressed my tenant because so help me I wanted to kill that fucking prick in the next room over. But I made a promise that I wouldn't, that I'd bring him back alive, and I needed to know something too. When I was out, Kyuubi started to explain things to me, but I interrupted and he decided to let me die I guess." He paused as he said that, it was confusing to him why the demon would allow his container to die, but then again, the rest of the human's life in that cage couldn't be any better than oblivion.

The blonde went on. "When I fought Sasuke I was only using Kyuubi's chakra, not my own. I don't want to die, there's still some things I have to do, I pushed all my chakra back into my body, and it did the rest, like it does every time with Kyuubi's more demonic chakra." He looked at them with a smile. "Disturbed yet? I know I am!"

Tsunade and Kakashi were silent for a long moment again. Again Tsunade removed the tension in the room, this time with a solid smack to the top of his head. The demon-container exaggerated and clutched his skull in feigned agony and Kakashi sighed as Tsunade told him to tough it out. He was the next to speak.

"Tsunade, may I have a moment with Naruto?" The question was innocent enough but Tsunade gave him a scrutinizing look just in case. She gave Naruto a quick medical scan, the chakra for which was difficult to summon after using so much today. She glared at Naruto for being able to heal without damage to his body permanently but answered Kakashi.

"Alright, you've got a week off from missions Hatake, when you two are done here, help Naruto get home since I don't know what the villagers or medics feel right now." A momentary glare and a reminder that she was the creator of the ten-thousand years of pain technique later she finished "But you're both showing up in my office tomorrow first thing, got it?" They both gave frightened nods, Kakashi hiding on the opposite side of Naruto to divert her wrath, and Naruto wishing that he could find the energy to hide under the bed.

The Hokage turned and left, muttering something about coward perverts and troublesome pranksters. Naruto stuck his tongue out at her retreating form and got the distinct impression that his sensei would have done the same had he not been constricted by the mask. Before he could look to see if it were the case, Kakashi was at the foot of his bed again, looking down at him intently. The blonde knew better than to intrude on his sensei's thoughts when he had that expression on.

"Naruto… Sasuke will probably be killed for his treason. I think its right because he's too big of a gamble, but that isn't the issue. Its… my fault that Sasuke was able to almost kill you, and that he ran, I owe more than I can ever make up to you and Sakura, but I promise you that it'll be different from now on." He paused to collect himself and might have said more if Naruto hadn't interrupted his train of thought.

"Wow, I never thought my sensei was so dim." He sat up in the bed, not breaking his words as he grimaced slightly. "Kakashi-sensei, Sasuke ran away because he's a whiny little prick who's too obsessive for his own good. Maybe his older brother had a hand in it, but it was his choice. It's Orochimaru's fault that he got that lucky shot in, you just made a common mistake and focused on one student, not even the future hokage is perfect, right?" His face stretched into his normal impossibly wide smile.

For a moment the jounin stared at his student, and slowly his visible eye curved to a rough approximation of the opposite of a third x-squared. Not that Naruto cared or understood mathematical descriptions of two-dimensional arcs (a/n: And somewhere in Japan, several television writer/producers and their artists sneezed in unison.). Kakashi decided that while he still had a lot to talk to his other student about, and still had a lot to make up to all of them (even Sasuke), it could wait, or it would be easier with them. Naruto had that effect on everyone, Kakashi had assumed that being so much older and more mature, porn excluded, he would've been immune to the blonde's joyous spirit. As with many people in Konohagakure, Kakashi had underestimated Naruto. He grunted out an agreeing sound and went towards the door.

"Well hurry up and get dressed, I'll walk ya home." That said, the jounin let the door shut behind him, leaving Naruto alone in the room with his tenant.

End Chapter One: Taking Suggestions

Author Notes: Hi howdy and hello to all. The name's Islagatt, and I'll be the author for this story. I know this all is a fairly common setup, but I'm hoping its enjoyable all the same, this _will_ be a Naruto leaves Konoha for x number of years and comes back all uber-like fic, I'm hoping that the quirks I throw in will make it interesting… I don't know if there will be a pairing in this, Naruto won't be a half-demon, Kyuubi will be more explained and more active as time goes on, I'm mostly done with my Sakura-trollop bashing… Ugh, I'm gonna stop this damn note, read the next two chapters please, I finished 'em in advance anyway. Oh yeah, I need a beta, any takers? Further, I need ten reviews to post the chapter after the initial batch.


	2. Chapter 2: A title way too long

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Two: Of Furred Humanoid Things and Chronological Bribery

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, shocking quiaff? Or wookies. I don't own any wookies.

Tsunade, the fifth Hokage, turned away from the hospital room where her little brother lay, her mind running at an extraordinary pace, racing through everything she had just seen and heard, and as she stood on the other side of the closed door, taking the moment to collect herself, her frantic mind came to several conclusions, in this order.

First, she needed a drink. Second, Naruto was talking to the Kyuubi. Third, correct me if I'm wrong but talking to the Kyuubi shouldn't be possible, unless the demon was far stronger than the seal was designed to accommodate, which implied it was stronger than it had shown during its assault.Fourth, she _really_ needed that drink. Fifth, Naruto had wanted to kill Sasuke, and he was talking to the Kyuubi, which meant the demon was beginning to influence her little brother's mind.

And finally, it came to the ultimate conclusion of, 'Oh FUCK'.

Sakura stood there staring at her spaced out hokage (1), trying to get her attention in as unobtrusive a way possible. After a long moment Tsunade's eyes widened and she paled a little bit, Sakura knew of the woman's strength from Naruto's story and her own near legends, and if she was that lost in thought, the pink-haired kunoichi was fairly sure she didn't want to be anywhere near her. The hokage's eyes seemed to finally focus on the girl before her and the older blonde blinked, recognition setting in.

"Aren't you…?"

"Haruno Sakura, hokage-sama-" said nin-girl was cut off by the hokage once more.

"Oh! You're the girl Naruto kept talking about then! Well don't worry, he'll be fine." _Though I'll be damned if I know how. _"In fact you can go and see him now, just be sure to knock… Is something wrong?" The hokage had noticed as Sakura winced at the first mention of Naruto's name and grew increasingly more shame-faced as she spoke about him and what he'd said.

"Hm? Wha- Oh, no hokage-sama, its just… Naruto doesn't want to see me I think." She sounded almost depressed by this. Tsunade was rather surprised more by what she said than by her being depressed by it. For a brief moment the hokage considered all the paperwork she had to catch up on, and the mending that she had no more stamina for anywhere and everywhere in the building. The crises were over, the regular doctors could and would take care of Sasuke, and Shizune was in charge of Hyuuga Neji's care, if the hokage were needed, Shizune would know where to find her.

In the split second it took her to think all that, the Hokage turned down the hall towards the exit and motioned for Haruno Sakura to walk with her. "Tell me what happened in the most detail you feel you can just now." And with the gesture and sentence, Tsunade had decided that Sakura would probably become her second apprentice.

_I need a drink._

The world was singularly fucked up, in the mind of many people. How it happened to be this way, most couldn't say. On the one hand, villages of ninjas existed as an extension of national governments, almost as if they were regular military. People walked or rode beasts of burden everywhere, but electricity ran lights where they came from and went. People used explosives to take down walls and make displays, but used taught strings for traps, and blades and knives for inflicting harm. Many really didn't understand it. Uchiha Sasuke was one of the many who could not really get his mind around the concepts, they made sense but at the same time they were totally nonsensical.

However, Sasuke decided very resolutely as he lay on a hospital bed, hooked into a variety of machines with doctors continuously hovering over him, that it was completely acceptable if he had no idea how modern medicine remained modern when so many things had gone comparatively rustic. He decided it didn't matter because at that time there was a wonderful little chemical running through his blood that he heard called morphine. Having forgotten all about the foreign chemical, the black-eyed shinobi was deep in conversation with his older brother, actually he was laughing his ass off while his brother, in all his dark, silhouetted evil glory, kneeled by the side of his bed with his blood red Mangekyou eyes chanting "Wookiewookiewookie" repeatedly (2).

Sasuke had no idea what wookiewookiewookie meant, but it sounded funny to his befuddled mind. And it had been so very long since he had a good laugh at anything. Inwardly free of his goal, he finally let his pent up need to laugh, to feel sad, to feel anything at all run loose. The doctors couldn't find a thing that was wrong with him, which did nothing to sate the gossip appetite of the nurses, who began to murmur and whisper of insanity and total mental collapse.

After a long time just laughing with his older brother, the silhouetted man exploded in smoke and revealed Sasuke's blonde teammate. "Naruto… knew it was you, dobe," was what he tried to say, but it came out all garbled and incoherent. The hallucinated Naruto flashed a huge smile and nodded

'Of course its me, Sasuke bastard, I'm your teammate, I had the most recent and powerful claim of all your dead associates to see you.' The ghost kept his smile up.

"For a dead man you're looking well," the blonde scratched the back of his head and nodded sheepishly. Sasuke's voice began to regain some logic to it as the doctors were mostly finished by now. "I'm sorry, I really didn't want to kill you. But I had to, I had to kill Itachi so I had to kill you. Forgive me, Naruto?" The few nurses and most of the doctors still in the room were confused by this, why would the prodigy ask for the demon brat's forgiveness? Kill him? Did that mean the demon was dead?

With so much gossip material, the stuff already out from the two of them being hospitalized, things were rapidly looking down for… everyone.

'Yeah yeah, don't get all mushy on me Sasuke, I forgive you. You seem to be turning human at least now. Not that it matters for us.' The blonde glanced at a watch he never wore and quickly shouted 'Whoa! Look at the time! I gotta get goin'. Sasuke take care of Sakura, she's always loved you and I can't do anything for her now, say hi to your parents for me ok?' The blonde walked out the open door. Uchiha Sasuke smiled up at the tiled ceiling, so his friend forgave him, and asked him to do something that, ninja or no, he could do. Footsteps alerted Sasuke to his parent's arrival, however, Sasuke was singularly disinterested in seeing them. Hallucination or not.

Sasuke's father spoke first. 'I'm ashamed at you. Really. You lost to the dead-last, just like you lost to your brother, and you wondered why I never spared time for you. You were a waste Sasuke, worthless.' Yesterday this was a part of his thinking for going to Orochimaru. Right now he didn't care, it didn't bother him that his father didn't love him or care for his happiness or success.

Sasuke's voice was quiet, not fearful, merely disinterested. The voice he used when he was trying to be Mr. Badass all the time. "Shut up old man, don't speak about my friends that way."

'Are you sure that you'll be ok, without being able to kill your brother are you sure you'll be alright?' His mother's voice. His head lifted from the pillow slightly and looked at her.

"I'll be alright mom, I've got a lot of life to catch up on you know." He gave her a faint smile, and she returned it warmly. His father smiled at him a little too and nodded his head as the two faded away. Sasuke looked back to the ceiling, letting his head collapse onto the pillow as he smiled and drifted completely to sleep.

Physics dictate that the fastest speed possible for matter is the infinitely approaching, yet never matching, the speed of light. The vast distance between the sun and the earth is crossed in eight minutes by photons and electromagnetic energy. Physics are a lot like statistical inference in that regard because they're both lies, they just happen to fit the events we see.

Rumor disproved this thinking of universal terminal velocity by simply occurring. It was a known fact in Konoha, that rumor could cross any distance light moved far faster especially when greased by the combination of unexplained events and curiosity.

The difference between the speed of rumor and the speed of light, is that when something moves at the speed of light, it ends up mostly the same when it slows or stops. When a thought moves at the speed of rumor, it is changed, altered, restructured.

And so, by the time Naruto and Kakashi were ready to exit the hospital, all of Konoha had heard the story. That the group sent to retrieve the Uchiha had returned, two were dead, the Uchiha and the Uzumaki might be dead too. That in and of itself was incorrect, but if asked, most would agree that that was more or less so.

However many also knew that the Kyuubi had killed the Uchiha. More knew that the Uchiha had killed the Kyuubi. A significant portion believed that both were dead, killing each other in the fight. Most however by this time agreed that it was totally and completely the Uzumaki's fault that their precious Uchiha had abandoned the village.

Well actually only the villagers believed that. By now most of the ninja knew Naruto, those that didn't heard a closer story to the truth, and the ninja community respected his dedication to the village. Tsunade knew this. The Konoha council, did not.

None of that was information had been supplied to either Kakashi or Naruto, however, as they left the hospital, only ten minutes after Sakura and Tsunade had. Kakashi, for what he knew of Naruto's life, had known how the village looked at him, and had always wanted to pity Naruto for it. But he couldn't, first of all because the blonde ninja was always smiling, and to an extent because he had never walked with his student.

Naruto, for his own part, saw the looks were worse than ever 'you killed three clan geniuses, demon' they said. Or maybe only his own guilt said that, he couldn't tell, but either way he couldn't bring out a smile to meet them with, and internally chalked it up to exhaustion. It'd be nice to get to sleep in his own bed for a few hours, if only that bastard fox would let him sleep for a change.

So the two walked through Konoha, in amiable silence, pondering their own misdeeds. The villagers regarded the strolling pair with contempt, they ignored Kakashi, and focused on the child with him. The sensei felt almost bitter over the complete lack of common sense these people held, the child protected them from the demon after all, it had brought back the Uchiha even nearly at the cost of his own life, hell the kid did more to deserve their respect and affection waking up, showering and trying not to drink spoiled milk in his breakfast than Kakashi had ever done. And yet the bookstore owner gave Kakashi discounts on all his Icha Icha books, but wouldn't even let Naruto in the store.

_This is so tremendously fucked up._ The jounin thought simply. He looked at his unusually glum student and wished he knew of someway to make things better for the kid. Of course, there was no solution, except to be there for he and Sakura as he had failed to for so long.

During the masked man's inner ramblings, Naruto's mind had remained exhaustedly void of thought. If he had been conscious enough to realize it, he would have become depressed by the intensity of the village's looks. However, thankfully for him, he was at his shitty, run-down apartment building before that could happen. Even exhausted as he was, he and Kakashi had no trouble at all foregoing the stairs in favor of walking up the side of the building to the third floor, and Naruto's particular apartment.

Kakashi smiled at his amazing student, he envied him that stamina and recovery, but he knew the price he paid for it and managed to forget his envy. A slight jangling came as the door unlocked, a mumbled 'g'night sensei' that might also have been a death threat in a foreign language emitted from the blonde as the keys disappeared and the door clicked shut and locked again.

Were Hatake Kakashi any less of a pervert, or grief-ridden survivor, he might've been offended with having the door shut in his face. As it was, he didn't think about it, and quickly turned on his heel. And disappeared into the streets, there was a village to wander through, and a lot of thinking to be done.

"He really said that?" asked one woman.

"Yeah… I know, I had it coming, I'm surprised it took him this long to say it," replied the second voice. This, only a girl, not yet a woman.

"Still, I never thought that he'd try to hurt someone he loved." The first looked away, considering the girl and the mysterious 'he' they were discussing. Trying to decide which impression had been wrong.

The girl's head snapped 'round so fast that her pink hair whipped around and smacked her neck lightly. "Loved? Naruto didn't love me…" Tsunade's look told her otherwise. She considered this for a long moment, and thought that maybe he did. Maybe he had loved her the same way she had loved Sasuke. But she hadn't snapped at Sasuke ever so why had Naruto… "oh" There it was. A simple revelation, she had always clung to hope with Sasuke, because he had no one and never expressed any interest in anyone. Sakura on the other hand, put up with Sasuke's rudeness, his coldness, the distance and the obsessiveness whilst ignoring someone who she hadn't even given a chance to treat her better.

That was something the pink-haired ninja had never considered before. It was surprising to suddenly have the possibility opened up to her. And of course her ignorance had removed the possibility of that happiness from her life before she had even realized it. Sakura thought for a moment that she should have felt sad for the loss of Naruto's once seemingly undying affection, should have felt hurt by the fact that he never wanted her to be anything other than a teammate, but she just couldn't bring herself to feel that way. No matter that the man she loved would never have feelings for her or really anyone, she still loved him in spite of herself.

_Damn you, Naruto._ Sakura thought.

"I wouldn't worry, that kid can't stay mad at anyone who isn't evil at heart. He even forgave someone like me." She smiled down at the pink haired girl as her own thoughts turned to the man who felt the same way about her. She couldn't help but see him in a slightly different light than he saw her, she wished she could love the white haired buffoon, but she just couldn't.

_Bastard pervert. _The hokage thought.

The remaining journey to the home of the Haruno family passed silently. Sakura cursed herself that she understood too late, and Naruto couldn't anymore. Tsunade cursed Jiraiya, because he did understand damnit, and that made it harder because he'd always understand for her when she needed him to. The two stopped before the Haruno household and the elder turned to face the younger, she was alike, maybe she didn't have Shizune's faithful determination, or for that matter her skill, but she could offer.

"Sakura, if you want to learn a way you can protect your precious people, Shizune and I will teach you. Think about it, don't answer me right away. Get some sleep first, and don't worry about Sasuke, he'll be fine." Sakura smiled instantly and nodded softly at the hokage's words, a spear of guilt stabbed through her as she realized that even after his betrayal and attempted murder of his best friend, she still valued him more.

The hokage returned to her chambers within the Hokage Tower and a short while thereafter fell into a blissfully dreamless sleep, drunk off her ass, but asleep.

Jiraiya and Kakashi sat next to one another in a bar. This was unusual, but neither cared really right then. After he left Naruto at his apartment, the jounin's guilt trip came back in force, so he did the only thing he knew. He had gone to the monument to mourn.

But when he got there, Kakashi hadn't felt the grief he always did. There was the lingering feeling of loneliness, but as soon as he recognized it as being different from grief, he thought of his students and the loneliness left him. Still insistent, the jounin went to the only other thing that could make his heart hurt like he felt it was supposed to.

Jiraiya had been in the bar conducting his research, and being rapidly turned down, when news hit him of the demon's demise, he'd thrown the exuberant man into a wall before slumping into his seat and drinking with renewed vigor. The best student he'd ever had, the one he was even more proud of than the fourth hokage, and who he was sure would go on to be even greater, was dead.

Jiraiya's mind wallowed in drunken self-pity, why did his students die? Why could he never know love? Why were his book sales so low this quarter? He glanced to his right just as Kakashi pulled up the mask again, and again asked no one in particular. Why can't anyone see beneath that mask? That thought got him thinking about Naruto again and he stared sulkily at his sake once more.

Kakashi was about to raise the glass back to his lips again when he glanced at the man sitting next to him. Jiraiya was not normally a quiet drunk, the few times when Kakashi had seen him drinking he had women all around him and was being as loud and obnoxious as his… Of course, that was it. Jiraiya worried about Naruto, a thought that Kakashi couldn't help but smile about, boy did pick his friends well.

"He'll be fine, Jiraiya," was all the black-masked man said.

This earned a glare from the aforementioned white-haired man, who until this point believed that Kakashi had only cared for the Uchiha boy's training, and by extension, did not concern himself with his other student's well-being at all. "What care have you that Naruto's dead? Wasn't even properly your student you arrogant prick, you ignored him and your other student for so long… Hell though, I did the same, I figured if I left him to figure it out he'd get better than if I just _gave_ him techniques…" his rapidly collapsing train of guilt-tripping intent led him into a series of murmured ramblings while Kakashi stared at him blankly.

"What the hell are you talking about? Naruto's alive, I just walked him back to his apartment. I mean yeah, he almost died… But…" Kakashi's mind returned to the hospital room, watching Naruto's baleful blue chakra boil in the hole in his chest, the flesh regenerating, and he shuddered. "He's better now"

Jiraiya, during the whole of Kakashi's statement had been rambling, he heard him, but the words didn't sink in at first. After a few minutes he blinked slowly, turned to Kakashi and said "he's still alive?" there was guarded hope in his voice. The nod he received was the only confirmation he needed. "YOSH! Barkeep, a round for the whole room, my student is alive!"

Shikamaru, Temari, Lee, and Gaara, did not arrive with the critically injured. When the pursuing medical team found the three who were near-dead, they were taken back. Those uninjured (relatively speaking) were left to make their own way home (3). Rock Lee was put back in the hospital, when he and Gaara had arrived; once again the suiken natural had overused his sober self and taken a few wounds while drunk as well, not to mention he hadn't been in perfect shape when he'd left to join the rescue attempt either. Gaara… Was Gaara, he only wanted sleep to recover his spent chakra, but the Shukaku would take care of him so he didn't even need that. After dropping Lee at the hospital, he had left to satisfy his motives, first on the list was to try 'ramen', which was his nemesis' favorite, or so he'd heard.

Shikamaru had arrived with Temari's help, and only required a brace to keep his broken finger in place and a few bandages from the overactive fan-wielder's indiscriminate assaults. He had asked after his team's condition as soon as they arrived, something Temari had at first thought to respect him for, but as they waited outside of the ICU, praying for word of his friend's survival, she decided she didn't like how weak his own self-confidence was. After the third 'this is my fault, I should have led them better' she had had enough.

"Oh quit the angst, it doesn't suit you. You did your job to the best of your abilities and no one can or will fault you for that except yourself. Now the fact is so far none of them have died, and your mission was successful." He still didn't look like he was going to give up, but he could see the wisdom in her words, and she could tell she was getting through to him. She pressed on. "Every ninja, in every village, knows that someday they may be called on to give their life for the mission, whatever it is, whether its stupid or not. Anyone who doesn't realize that is a complete fool, and you don't strike me as the type to worry over complete fools" he gave her a hard look but the self-pity in his eyes was gone. Determination and anger mixed together had replaced that in the lazy Chuunin's eyes.

Temari shrugged off the look he gave her and congratulated herself on getting him out of his funk. The kid was going to be Konoha's war advisor and chief strategist, so it made no sense to allow the Sand's greatest ally to blunt themselves that way. Still, she wasn't terribly fond of just waiting around, and she was decidedly unwelcome here at that moment, so she got up and wandered off to her own thoughts. A silent Shikamaru waited 'til she was out of earshot before releasing a breath he hadn't realized he was holding and sat down where she had been only a moment ago, thinking about different ways to approach the same problem, now that he had the time, so he might be better prepared next time.

He was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he hadn't noticed when an older shadow-user sat down beside him, taking his silence as a sulk. The man put a hand on his son's shoulder, attempting to reassure him, one of scant few moments the older Nara had been terribly fatherly.

Shikamaru was surprised by the touch, not because his father was a bad father (his patriarchal capacities were debatable, but the strategist would stand by him were he questioned), but because he was distracted and not terribly with it just then. He blinked at the older man curiously. "Pops? What're you doing here?"

That wasn't the reaction he'd expected, and he pulled his hand back quickly. "I was coming to see how you were. And how Chouji was, his father wasn't allowed in here after he tried to break down the door to see him. You know this wasn't your fault."

The pineapple-haired kid shook his head. "No, this is my fault, but it's done now and everyone's still alive. Naruto managed to pull off the mission despite my mistakes, all I can do is prepare more for the next time a situation like this comes up. Don't get me wrong, I regret fucking things up like this, but that doesn't mean I'm going to sulk and be troublesome," he concluded with that same determined look he got when he came up with a new strategy to beat his opponent.

The older Nara was shocked by his son's maturity, and was actually at a loss for what to say. An awkward silence stretched on between the two of them, neither knew words with which to break it, so they went back to their respective thoughts. The atmosphere grew tense with a unique form of lazy tension, that to most was comparable to a feeling of vertigo or intense nausea.

This was the kind of atmosphere that the hokage's messenger walked into sometime later that afternoon. She was momentarily struck by simultaneous powerful urges to take a nap and vomit, and oddly, to play a game of shogi. However, she shrugged off the atmosphere's influences long enough to break the silent tension. "Shikamaru? Nara Shikamaru?" The tension lifted as two faces jerked in her direction. She was frozen to the spot by the twin glares, but she persevered. "H-hokage-sama sent this…" her hand came forward with a neatly tied together letter. She bowed and made a hasty, but dignified, retreat.

With a faint 'troublesome' that barely had any heart in it, Shikamaru unfolded the letter and glanced over the contents. The third time he read the thing he registered its meaning, and stood up, folding the letter again. He looked at Chouji's room and then started to walk away again, calling over his shoulder to his father.

"I have to go and prepare a mission report for the hokage. I won't be back here until tomorrow afternoon." There was just the barest hint of hesitance in his voice as he spoke. "Please keep an eye on Chouji if you can, geez, if I'd known being a Chuunin would be so troublesome…" his voice trailed away as he left the corridor.

The older Nara figured that was the closest they would ever come to amicability, and smiled. A glance down the hall told him he was alone, and his hand snaked around to the ninja pouch, pulling free a worn orange book with a fleeing woman and a chasing man on the cover.

Were things in Chouji's ICU slightly less hectic, they would hear a faint giggling from outside.

The Hokage's office struck its current resident as being much like her younger brother. When it was only herself and Shizune, it seemed small and compact, but with everything easily accessible. When she needed to give out missions, there was space aplenty. She would have sworn that when she woke up with a hang over the window actually _moved_ just so that the light wouldn't give her a migraine. It had always in the past seemed to change itself for her convenience and the comfort of those she cared for.

Sometimes, half-drunk but unable to sleep, she stared at the ceiling in her chambers at three am. Amid flurries of questions and ponderings that her intoxicated mind could summon up, the thoughts of her office frequently came up, and she wondered how and why it did that. Just before she had gone to sleep once, she had figured out reality in general, and her office in particular was afraid of what she'd do to it if it didn't accommodate her whims.

This morning proved to her that, sometimes, reality was more of a bitch than she was. Really, really bitchy. Bad hangover bitchy.

Actually the morning itself was beautiful, the sun was up, there were no clouds in the sky, the pleasant smell of flowers hung in the air, and there were more than a few ninja and civilian couples milling about on this lazy Sunday. What made the day suck so spectacularly for the Hokage, was the fact that the office was the biggest it had ever been, and empty apart from her desk, eight chairs against the opposite wall, and a tall clock against another wall. The eight chairs were for the Konoha council, and were as yet unoccupied, but the space between each of them consumed a lot of the available floor space, and there would have to be several ninja in the room, her own attendant, and any of the council's little minions, not to mention the record-keeping individual who would write down the proceedings to be stored in the archives.

Some days, it sucked to have to be the one in power. If she had held the meeting in the council chambers they would all have had space to stand or sit comfortably and easily, but then she would have given more power to the council, and weakened the value of her ninja. The way she had set this up, the council would not be invited to receive any direct attention from her ninja, who would be resolutely focused on their leader.

Or at least, Tsunade hoped, prayed, and had considered sacrificing her apprentice to a variety of gods for. She knew, however, that it would never turn out that easily, the three ninja's eyes that met hers confirmed this pessimistic outlook. Some days, she decided very resolutely…

Naruto had woken up, as normal, with the dawn. People really didn't expect that of the periodically late and frequently idiotic genin, but actually he did. He always woke up at dawn, spent an hour forgetting that his life would suck if anyone else were him and praying to the spirits all around him that he'd have their ability to ignore the world around them and live on as they chose. Another hour of isometric muscle training (though Naruto didn't know precisely what that meant, he understood that tensing and pushing his muscles for an hour every day made him loosen up). When that was done, he normally decided that he would go back to sleep.

On that particular day, he had decided to wake, eat, bathe, and dress, forgoing his traditional two hour activities in favor of more sleep, he needed sleep, his chakra was empty from the healing yesterday, but at the same time his reserves had boosted considerably. Later this day, he would consider the skipping out of prayers and excercise to be a tremendous mistake, which part more so, he wouldn't figure out until his sensei gave him insight, years later.

Clad in his traditional orange with blue jacket and trousers, he momentarily considered how old these clothes were, how much abuse they'd seen. Then he remembered the hole in his jacket, the one that punched through both sides, and there was a blinding moment of pain right through his chest, but he managed to tune it out, and he stopped trying to think about that ragged hole that should still have been through his chest.

A brief moment of thought, and he decided that if the council and some others were going to be there, the jacket would add something to the presentation… Besides, he really didn't have much in the way of alternatives. He strapped on his sandals and went to the Hokage's offices, he noticed she looked rather distracted upon his entry, and being the first one there, he just stood around in the middle of the room. Actually his brain shut off while he stood there, regaining a bit of lost energy. He was so gone that he didn't notice when Shikamaru showed up and gave his torn jacket a befuddled look. Even when Kakashi poofed into existence beside him, he didn't notice, despite the jounin's uncharacteristic timeliness.

However, when the door slid open again, his eyes snapped open and locked onto the forms and hateful looks of disgust from the eight men who would just as soon have him dead. It wasn't any different from normal, the looks they gave him, it was the same he always faced, so why did it bother him so much? His eyes had already taken on an unearthly glow and he felt chakra flowing through him, hot and angry and ugly.

He forced himself to calm and looked to the hokage, she gave him an ambiguous look, but nothing else. Sighing mentally, he decided that today wasn't going to go right even if…

Urahara Zanzai was the oldest member of the Konoha Elder Council (less affectionately known as the council, or just "Those f-ugly bastards"), and consequently, its spokesman. There were no rules that stated that, but it seemed to be a tacit tradition, the fact that he vehemently agreed with their philosophies (namely "Belittle and push away the Hokage, Make the vessel's life a living hell, Put the council in position to benefit most from any position), merely added their unanimous support to his words.

Because of this position, all of his peers and their attendants led him in, though the attendants were swiftly and soundly thrown out, the two ANBU outside of the office grinned savagely beneath their masks, focusing their malign eyes on the vulnerable attendants. The council men and women went on anyway, ignoring the slap in the face with practiced snobbery. They spared none of the ninja or leaders present any looks, save for the contempt and in some cases outright hate, for the demon-child.

Again with that self-same superiority, the council members took the seats left available to them without being asked, and managed to look formal and utterly relaxed at once. An effect they just knew would piss off the hokage. The grin she answered their unspoken challenge with only served to build an uneasiness that had been growing in the Urahara's stomach since they entered.

Even before the meeting began, one of the younger (only in his sixties) council members spoke up with haughty indignity "Why is that offensive little… _creature_ here?" The councilman indicated the Kyuubi-container.

Shikamaru, being Shikamaru and Naruto's age (4), did not at first understand. After thinking about it, he decided that it must have been Naruto's reputation as a prankster, combined with the village's apparent inherent enmity of the genin. Though none of it made practical sense to the genius, he had reconciled humans and their troublesome tendencies in his mind long ago.

Kakashi winced slightly, his visible eye narrowing at first in sympathy, and then in his own anger. What the hell was wrong with them, he was thirteen (4), he hated to agree with Gai but Naruto should've been enjoying his life devoid of serious stresses (read: MAKING THE BEST OF HIS SPRINGTIME OF YOUTH!). And these putzes, these village leaders who had taken great time and effort to shove their heads as deep into their asses as they could seemed to forget that he was not an adult, or the Kyuubi, seemed hell-bent on making his life terrible and painful. His angry internal tirade was cut short as he felt chakra boil off of his student, and it took all of Kakashi's willpower not to stare at him.

Naruto's eyes were glowing again, his teeth gritted together and his own mixed energy was carrying disturbing impressions. The three other ninja in the room could feel the angry and enraged chakra their comrade, where everything about him normally seemed infectiously happy and cheerful, determined to succeed, this new feeling from him just felt ugly, ugly and infinite. That thought came with another one attached to it, and Shikamaru thought it felt something akin to looking into the abyss as one fell, he decided very firmly that he wanted to clean himself off as soon as he stopped shaking.

Naruto was exercising self-restraint that would have impressed even the overestimating Tsunade at that moment, just to keep his radiating energy from destroying the cretins behind him. He caught the Hokage's guarded understanding and his chakra signature disappeared as he drew that ugliness back inside, and locked it away with his other unhappy feelings. The grin plastered itself in place almost automatically, and Tsunade's eyes turned piteous to her little brother before hardening and looking at the council.

"This shinobi is here because I want him to be here, and as the military leader of this village, I command ALL of MY shinobi" Tsunade had chosen the particular words with effect in mind, stressing subtly the shinobi title, and emphasizing the fact that all the village's shinobi answered her first, as was written in the village's constitution. Urahara winced mentally at her attack, and at the unspoken meaning, they were not in charge, and they could not boss around this hokage as they had done with the third. Or the fourth.

Actually, there were a good many reasons why Tsunade wanted her little brother here, and they were all equally valid. But right now the council pissed her off, and she wanted to establish without question who was in charge here. Too bad the bastards couldn't feel chakra, she would love for them to know what kind of beast they were poking at.

"If there are no further objections," she didn't wait for any others to speak "then we shall begin this debriefing. Nara Shikamaru, as team leader I trust you know what happened, please begin" she sat back for a moment as a nameless attendant scribbled down the account of their pursuit, the Nara was absolutely and completely truthful to the best of his ability.

"After I threw Naruto over the Sound-nin, I attempted to distract her, to give Naruto as much time as possible to get to Sasuke. As my abilities are not heavily combat-oriented, I was losing fairly badly until Temari of Sunagakure showed up and saved me with apparent ease. There wasn't anything we could do at that point so we returned to Konoha." He concluded his report and looked to the hokage.

She nodded slowly. "Very good," she looked to Naruto "Continue from when you began your pursuit."

The blonde nodded and recalled to her his brief battle with the bone-user, Sasuke's departure, Rock Lee's appearance, and his subsequent battle. "When I caught sight of Sasuke, I used only my other chakra to beat him, his curse seal was already affecting him, and I had to take him down before he got serious, otherwise I might have had to kill him, and then everyone else would have suffered for nothing.

"Of course if Kakashi-sensei hadn't been so quick in finding the both of us, chances are Sasuke would've gotten away and I'd probably not wake up if he had." The implication there was the blonde's normal barely veiled way of degrading someone else's character.

"Which brings us to the last part. Kakashi, I know what happened, you brought Naruto and Sasuke back to Konoha for emergency medical treatment. Would you please summarize their status when you picked them up and when they got here?" Her eyes bored into Kakashi's single visible orb and he stiffened a bit under the scrutiny.

"Yes ma'am," Naruto glanced sideways at him, calling the Hokage 'ma'am' was not something his sensei normally would do. "When I got to them, Uchiha Sasuke had a circular flesh wound on his stomach, his elbows and knees were all quite expertly stabbed through with kunai. It looked like a lot of thought went into the technique used because they had been quite incapacitating, but should've been easier to heal and didn't seem fatal. Naruto on the other hand, had a mass of scar tissue covering the left side of his face and lower on his chest, there was a hole running all the way through his body. In addition his back was shredded, like someone had taken a bunch of razors and put them in front of an exploding note. Beyond that his chakra releasing points were mostly burned out."

Shikamaru blinked at the information about Naruto's wounds. _He can't have been wounded that badly, he looks fine! Even Neji didn't have wounds that severe. _

"When we returned, Sasuke was quickly stabilized by the medical staff in the hospital, those that could be spared from working on the Akimichi, Hyuuga and Inuzuka genin. Naruto himself was tended by you, ma'am, as I'm sure you recall. You were able to heal the worst of the wounds thanks to your talent and his regenerative… bloodline." Naruto glanced at his sensei, wondering about the lie for a moment, before he realized that Shikamaru didn't know, and silently thanked him for it.

The Hokage nodded slowly, folding her fingers in front of her. She glared at the councilors beyond her ninja, deigning to bring them into the conversation finally. "Now that you have heard the facts, I would like to know what you think we should do with the Uchiha boy. I will take into consideration the words of all gathered here now, but I will tell you this, I think he should be put to death, like any traitor, and if you argue against this then you must have a damn good reason or I'll throw your thoughts, and maybe you, out the window."

She had spoken in one long breath, the councilors had not had any time to interrupt her before she finished. Again, her blatant disregard for the leaders of the village was shocking to them, they who had for so long ruled pliant and obedient Hokages. Urahara Zanzai glowered and held his hand for the others to remain silent.

"Speaking on behalf of the council," his wheezing old voice began, but it picked up strength and certainty as he went on. "I feel we cannot afford to lose the Uchiha bloodline completely, I further feel that the Uzumaki clan's influence was the primary ingredient in the Uchiha's betrayal. Therefore, we collectively suggest that the Uchiha be reinstated with full active status, awarded chuunin rank for luring four attacking nin into traps that killed them, placed under a more competent sensei-" Kakashi winced and Naruto looked enraged again, though his chakra wasn't leaking out again, thank kami for that.

Tsunade halted the ridiculous act. "Enough! I am well aware of the council's suggestions, and their motives. While I acknowledge the.." she forced the word "_wisdom_, of the council, I must point out several things." She grinned, oh this was going to be fun. "First of all, the Uchiha bloodline and its Sharingan eye are lost, maybe not for three more generations, but there's no way without severe inbreeding and forced marriages, which I will not use for an overrated technique Xerox." She gave the copy ninja a brief, apologetic look. "Second is the fact that if the Uchiha lives, it will only draw down Orochimaru's wrath again, and we may not survive a second assault, as the military leader of this community I cannot accept that. And last, if anyone tries to pin the blame on my little brother again, I'll demonstrate why peasants are supposed to defer to warriors, beginning with you, Urahara-san."

The mentioned councilman gave her a look that promised revenge, but it was mirrored by the Hokage's eyes, and in the end, he knew she could do what she threatened, and looked away. The Hokage grinned, she won that fight, and that was just the first one. Her amber eyes moved to the jounin again, inviting his opinion.

Hatake Kakashi sighed heavily, not wanting to say what he had to say. "He should be executed, as soon as possible. His actions are inexcusable and his continuing life only makes Konoha more appealing to Orochimaru." He couldn't quite look to anyone when he said this, so he focused on the wall behind the hokage, in any other scenario he'd read his book. Tsunade nodded thoughtfully and looked to the orange-clad eyesore.

He took a deep breath before he spoke, it took a great effort of will to do it without expressing his desires. "Sasuke can't ever be allowed to serve as a ninja again. If no one dies from this then let's let him live, here, with his chakra and Sharingan sealed. Killing him after what we just went through to bring him back is a slap in the face to our squad." Tsunade was a bit surprised by the fact that he had to speak through gritted teeth. Something was wrong with her little boy, and she had every intention of talking to him later.

With an effort of will she drew her eyes to Shikamaru, who promptly took his cue. "Ah, yes, well… It's troublesome to let him live, Naruto is right, if we didn't want him to live then what's the point of sending us out to recover him? And its an unusually bright idea for us to seal off his chakra and Sharingan, but since the seal can't affect his genetics we might still get a few generations of Sharingan users, who may be more loyal to Konoha without such ambitions as killing a brother. What's more, it may give us an opportunity to lure Orochimaru into a trap and avenge the sandaime. Frankly it'll be better to keep track of the Uchihas and Orochimaru's target than to, say, exile him, or outright deny Orochimaru his target."

Again Tsunade nodded calmly and was about to end the meeting when Naruto spoke up again. "Ba- Hokage-sama… I'm begging you not to kill him, other than that I don't care just don't kill him."

"Naruto… I-" she was interrupted by the same councilor who spoke before.

"Stop acting as if you cared demon! It's your fault if he dies anyway and you couldn't care less, about that boy or about this village!" Urahara Zanzai resisted the urge to slap his forehead at his associate's idiocy.

A tense moment passed as Tsunade, eyes narrowed to slits, walked closer and stood over the councilman, who stared defiantly up at her. Her voice was strained, but formal, carrying a heavy sound of finality. "You have violated the third Hokage's law. The punishment for this is death." She snapped her fingers and one of the chuunin outside came in, she looked to him. "Take this man to a holding cell, his sentence will be carried out shortly, he has no rank so anything he says is to be disregarded" Her tone brooked no argument and the chuunin quickly complied as the council erupted into hysterical cries of outrage.

The councilor in question struggled in the Chuunin's grasp, but he was a sixty year old man, not a highly trained ninja in his early twenties. He was gone and his cries were no longer heard. The Hokage glared at the village council and smiled a cold, ruthless smile. They quieted quickly. "I am Hokage, not a tool of the council, I command this village's military forces, you guide its civilian affairs. I am not the Third or the Fourth, and I will not bend to your will, if you think you're above the law, I'll know, and you'll not get away with a damn thing." She turned her back on the stunned council and returned to her desk.

"Leave. Now." Shocked, relieved, outraged, the council made haste and left with as much dignity as they could muster. None of the shinobi present looked surprised, well actually Naruto was surprised, but he was emotionally shocked for the moment so he just looked impassive, an unnatural expression for his whiskered face. Shikamaru had guessed by the positioning and the phrasing here that this had been a demonstration of the Hokage's independence. He still wondered about that third's law that Tsunade had mentioned, but didn't know what to think of it.

Kakashi wasn't in the least surprised, as soon as the last councilor was out the door he was reading Icha Icha Paradise again, the dog-eared and worn out novel held at his waist. Tsunade gave him a withering look that he ignored. "Alright, Nara, Hatake, you're both dismissed. Naruto I want you to stick around if you could?" The blonde nodded while his sensei poofed into nothingness and his team leader wandered out to investigate that law, mind awhirl with potentialities. Shizune departed after a look from her master and decided she had work to do at the hospital.

Tsunade moved around her desk when they were alone again and hugged him to her, he still seemed to be a bit stunned and she hoped that the little bit of tenderness she could offer would set him right again, for the moment at least.

His lack of outward reaction should have warned her, as she clutched him so tightly. Perhaps it was because everyone told her what a great healer was, she believed it again. Maybe she just wanted to believe that her little brother couldn't be so down in the dumps for long. It was something though.

The short blonde hugged her back, body half-shaking at the physical contact. The contact was brief and then he pushed away. "Hey, Baa-chan, don't coddle me like some little kid!" The strained indignation in his voice made her smile, because she wanted to believe it.

"Yeah, yeah, kid, now get out 'cuz I've got work." Her scolding was the same way, forced, and Naruto wanted to believe it.

Shizune was the only one still thinking right when she watched Naruto walk out of the office in a funk. Sighing, she shook her head and went in to tend to her master, thinking to herself. _Some days just wouldn't go right if you paid them._

End Chapter Two "Of Furred Humanoid Things and Chronological Bribery"

(1): Do recall that in the original anime, Sakura didn't train under Tsunade until after the first attempt to find Otogakure (Tea Country arc I think).

(2): Seriously, I have no idea where this comes from, but it hit me one day while I was eating pocky and I laugh to the point of incapacitation every time.

(3): Am I the only one who wonders how just enough medic-nin went out to find the three most critically injured combatants?

(4): Okay, no not really… but no one quite realizes what age Naruto actually _is_.

Author Notes: Looking for a beta, working on more of this and my other stories, In A New Light, You Steal My Lies, At Any Cost, Deathstalker Fulfillment, and Leviathan's Pryde. There is one more chapter pre-written, and if I get ten reviews I will finish the chapter after that and post it.


	3. Chapter 3: My Brother, the Professor

A Demon's Dream

Chapter 3: My Brother, the Professor

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, if I did, the Kyuubi would be the main character.

Blue sandaled feet wandered down the street, an orange jumpsuit with a hole in one shoulder that exposed a white t-shirt beneath, and blonde hair barely restrained by a blue-cloth forehead protector moved above them. That would have been odd if there wasn't a body attached to them, actually it still was odd because the blonde hair was all people saw of its face. This expression on that body –the only body that wore clothes that gaudy in public- was something foreign to the people of Konoha, and frankly, it was disturbing to them.

In point of fact, Konoha really didn't like the Uzumaki boy for the same reason they hated Mitarashi Anko, which is to say, they both upset the status quo. Naruto threw the balances and people out of order around him by virtue of his tremendous strength and seemingly unlimited potential, anytime he was pegged down into one role and behavior, the people eased their attitude towards him, but this most recent demonstration of power… He had defeated the last of the Uchiha clan, and once again showed to them how much more he was than a simple prankster. And right now he was throwing their status quo even worse with his morose and nearly depressed air.

Actually, the blonde was deep in thought, a truly unnatural state for him, he was reflecting on the words that had been exchanged in the hokage's office. His mind raced in millions of directions at once but many of those directions agreed that the traitorous bastard should die, he should die mostly because he had been such a close friend to the blonde, and yet he betrayed him and the entire village, in other words, it hurt. And he had to ask himself as he continued on his way, that if the bastard had hurt him so bad, then why did he not ask for him to die, knowing the Hokage she'd probably have done it just because the bastard had caused the already fragile boy some psychological damage.

The ever present, self-doubt, self-pity, introspective sliver of Naruto's psyche told him that it was completely understandable for the village's prized bloodline scion to slay the vile beast that plagued the city. Of course, the dominant aspects of his personality, and his rarely used training-and-mission-built detachment both pushed aside that voice, neither wanted to hear it and neither really believed it. But the blonde's current mindset was eager to listen to its most sinister sliver-self.

If Naruto had been put to death so long ago, as the village council had said to do, as the villagers and ninja had wanted done, then he would never have gotten in the way of Sakura and Sasuke. Or rather, he would never have heard Sakura blame him for Sasuke's frigidity and thus that would be the same as her being happy (no one ever said that self-pity featured a thought-out and logical road map). Along that same vein, Hyuuga Hinata, whose idolization of the blonde was apparent even to its (admittedly dense) subject (though by no means were the affections inherent to such admiration known, affection being something of a foreign concept to him), would never have to compare her self-confidence and her determination to someone else and would thus have been able to find her own strength. Perhaps more importantly, his rapid growth, owed almost entirely to the Kyuubi no Kitsune, would never have prompted the Uchiha's inferiority complex to flare up again, and he'd never have gone to Orochimaru for power.

These were thoughts that were conducive to his overall mood, and were thoughts he embraced because of that, a very human habit to selectively embrace reality. His self-pity, something he so rarely indulged in, spiraled down and down, introspection finding more faults within himself and with his prior actions.

Or rather, that's what would've happened.

Within infinite void that was the blonde's brain-case, the nine-tailed demon fox stalked back and forth, his plans were so close to advancement, but his host, Naruto, the most important factor in all of the Kyuubi's equations, was quickly falling out of his grasp. Until today, the fox had assumed what everyone else had, that his spirit was totally indomitable. Until yesterday the fox never believed it would be able to use the host in the fashion it needed to.

And until just that moment, the Kyuubi no Kitsune, had worried about little Uzumaki Naruto. Oh it just filled his demonic heart with glee to see what happened next.

The fox watched, and Naruto watched, as a gob of saliva, phlegm, alcohol, and tobacco hit the ground before him. And just then one could observe the quicksilver speed of human thought, if they were able to watch the blonde's brain that is.

For in the single moment before he acted, the self-proclaimed future Hokage considered his role as a ninja, his dreams, the villagers around him, and his life 'til this point. Of course, a ninja's first duty was to protect the village he was from, he knew that, and that meant threats from outside and inside the village. His dream was of course to be the Hokage and have the world's acknowledgement, and that meant learning how to sacrifice a part of the whole for the betterment of a larger part, a lesson he was eager to learn at that moment. So. Assuming that it was better to do things that would make less problems in the long run, he decided to set the villagers straight right then and there, because it wouldn't actually harm anyone this way, and the village would be better off like this.

So with that thought in the blonde ninja's mind, Manbun Sonmin –the offending villager- suddenly found himself pressed against a wall, the monster's arm out pointed more or less at him, and a shuriken embedded just beside his ear.

The street stopped moving, and the villagers there turned to watch something new, even if they hated things that weren't normal, they always loved to see blood and violence, after all, they were only human.

What no one really expected to see, was the blonde-haired, blue-eyed, orange-clothed ninja sticking to the wall with a kunai in one hand, drawn back and raised into the air while their demon bore the most vile and hideous smile any of them had ever seen. Sonmin himself would've whimpered, if he had the courage, or if he hadn't been rooted by the powerful, glowing blue eyes that froze him in place. The down-on-his-luck tanner heard some noise, and judging by the motion of the blonde's mouth, he guessed it to be speech, but he didn't understand the sound, just the flowing melody of threatening evil that it offered.

Naruto's body was on autopilot, the course and the words and the actions determined by the rage and the repressed feelings he didn't care to hold in anymore. Probably this would get him in trouble, but at the moment he couldn't bring himself to care about that, he practically heard the kunai in his hand singing that it wanted to taste the man's blood, but he tuned out its siren song and focused on giving a promise.

"You all look at me and you don't see me, you only see _it_, just a demon, a monster. Well if that's what all of you want so much, then the next time you look at me, you can watch two demons, and you'll never see anything more terrifying than me; even the Kyuubi's wrath will be nothing next to the terror and destruction I'll be capable of!"

Sonmin heard a popping sound next to his head as the shuriken was pulled from the wood, just after the background noise of the shinobi's speaking stopped. He stared straight where the blonde's eyes had been until a few moments ago, and finally broke down, collapsing to his knees and retching violently onto the street, while most of the civilians around were recovering from their shock. They didn't raise a ruckus over it, each having a thought along the lines of 'Someone else will tell the Hokage or the council about this, and that little brat will pay. At the same time I don't really want to piss him off, so I'll let someone else do it' the latter half being something of a subconscious imperative, given that they would never admit to being afraid of a twelve, thirteen(?) genin.

Actually he was fourteen/fifteen (a/n: fail genin test twice + 12 year old graduation 14 year old graduation (if someone's got a more plausible thought or some doubts on my math then let me know because this bugs the hell out of me)), and damn tired of being so underestimated. Or rather, he would be, if the fox sealed in him let him recall his actual age. On the outside, the blonde passed it off as thinking that his birthdays were unpleasant affairs (the Kyuubi was defeated that day, most of the villagers remembered him on that day, this led to problems) and thus there was the perfectly acceptable excuse that he didn't want to use them as markers.

This was just one of the many things that the fox held in check for his host, being sealed into the same body, being an extra soul, but somehow only half of the being that was Naruto, gave him a great degree of power in affecting his host. In fact a lot more so than most people believed was the case, or would believe given the blonde's overzealous cheerfulness. Frankly, the Kyuubi didn't feel it would be satisfying if his host ran around doing the rampaging he so badly needed to perform, to that end he carefully sculpted and filtered the boy in his developmental years into… Oh for gods' sake couldn't he get a minute's privacy from the nosy readers invading his cage!

Or for that matter from his host's mind-image.

"GIVE ME JUTSUS! GIVE ME CHAKRA! MAKE ME STRONGER YOU BASTARD FOX!" The blonde was screaming at his tenant, tears streaming down his face in the jaundice light.

The Kyuubi calmly regarded him, and felt his respect drop a notch, he scolded himself for that, it wasn't the boy's fault after all. "**No.**" A simple answer from the fox-demon, but not one that the boy wanted to hear.

"NO! 'NO'! What do you mean 'No' ? I want to hurt them, isn't that what you want too? Come on bastard fox! You know what I said to them, now make me a demon!"

Kyuubi no Kitsune, the fox of infinite patience, of evil beyond mortal ken, gave a frustrated sigh. "**Listen to me, boy. I don't care if I _do_ live in your body, you're to address me with respect and reverence when you're making a request on this scale. You want a little boost to your chakra? Fine. You want me to keep you from dying? I can do that. But let me explain the way the world works to you for people and beings that aren't genius.**"

For possibly the first time in his life, Naruto shut up, stunned into silence at the depth displayed suddenly by his demonic birthright. It just wasn't natural for the Kyuubi to speak so much at once, and for it to actually be teaching him… The world must be coming to an end, he decided very firmly.

"**Humans like you don't get power, you work for it, everything you gain must be fought for, tooth and nail, you've gotta bleed for your desires and your dreams, and it's the same way for me. Or rather… it will be.**"

"Uh… Fox, what the hell are you talking about?" The blonde was sitting in a chair that hadn't been there, but he was tired of standing around and so he had decided to sit. "Waitaminute. You said that there was a reason you attacked Konoha, there's a link between that and why your chakra has always been leaking into me. And you also said you'd tell me the difference between demons and humans. We've got time now, bastard fox, so tell me." Naruto's rare streak of intellect, the Kyuubi couldn't help but beam with pride at the other half.

"**Perceptive, kid, you get full marks for that.**

"**Alright, Sherman set the way-back machine for the dawn of civilization **(1)" The blonde blinked in total confusion. "**Ehh… Right. Anyway. At the beginning of man's abstract thoughts, he was upsetting the carefully arranged balance of energies in the universe, that means that order was disrupted and then there would be chaos, got it?**" a nod "**Good. Order in the universe man is present in couldn't allow itself to be disrupted by something intangible, so every time these apes came up with an abstract thought, something became of that thought in a less real space than yours. Call it chaos or limbo or whatever you like, but that's where demons, angels, and gods exist. Summon beasts are fundamental aspects of the world, twisted slightly by human progress, but you humans affect so much… Regardless, demons and angels and gods and all of us conceptual entities, can only exist to the identity that humans and ourselves collectively create, that is to say, human thought is sculpting us, but we project ourselves back out at the same time, understand this at all?**"

The blonde thought for a minute. "I think I get it… But that doesn't explain the differences between our forms, demons and humans" The Kyuubi smiled, the boy had more potential than he'd ever hoped.

"**I'm getting to that brat!**" Naruto 'harumph'd and gave a disgusting pout. "**As much as a demon is made, it is indestructible so long as the thoughts that made it continued to exist, which is why beings like me can project images back, to make sure that we remain real. We are as infinitely powerful or as underwhelmingly weak as we are imagined to be, but we can't ever exceed it. Take me for instance, I am the most powerful demon ever, and yet its technically possible for a human to one day leave me in the dust, in terms of power.**" Naruto found himself finding that hard to believe. After all, most of the village had died in the process of just sealing the beast.

"**Infinitely unlikely, but possible none the less.**" Ah, there was that arrogance that the blonde so flippantly chalked up to his companion. "**Of course this would lead to, among humans, an intense philosophical debate, over which one was preferable. It doesn't really matter of course because most humans are just given the one option. But just consider for a moment what would happen if a human, with all its free will and capacity to grow stronger , had all the power and experience of a demon integrated as an equal and separate part of its human whole. **"

"**That, in a nutshell ninja-boy, is what we are. You and I are separate personalities and separate powers, but we are both only half of Uzumaki Naruto.**"

"So you won't make me stronger then?" the one-track blonde asked.

"**No, we're both going to make Uzumaki Naruto stronger, but, you'll have to trust me in order to be as strong as you can be, as it stands there's so much distrust on your half that you can't even tap into all that power the fourth gave you, even if this seal isn't as strong as it needs to be.**" The blonde looked at his tenant curiously with that statement, but the Kyuubi's eyes and threatening growl put an end to the things he wanted to ask. "**The bottom line here, you more visible aspect of our shared psyche, is that we have to trust each other, and we have to leave. The village _is_ holding you back, not in an Uchiha 'oh woe is me, they don't have anyone strong enough to teach me' sense of holding you back, but they haven't given us a single teacher that did anything truly good for us. Jiraiya doesn't count because you forced him to teach us, they're hate has blinded you to the possibility that I'm as virtuous as you are and by extension cut off the greater part of your strength except in dire straits, and honestly, what ties you here that you wouldn't give up for a few years to get stronger?**" Displaying a rare moment of insight (frightening the demon with his newfound frequency of these), he paused and considered the matter.

And considered.

And pondered.

And the part of the Kyuubi's mind that was a reflection of Uzumaki Naruto was becoming irritated with his other half's slowness. Most of the Kyuubi though, knew that this all was an event that required some serious consideration.

"It sucks." The simple declaration confused the demon, because it wasn't his normal tone, it was… tired. "I would've argued less than an hour ago, that my friends and my precious people here would keep me from strength. The reason I'd go with Jiraiya is of course, he obviously cares, he's been there for me as much as he could, when I really needed him at least" Kyuubi glanced at him with an unreadable look, but Naruto went on, ignoring his debatably wiser half. "But now it sucks because I know this, it's going to be hell to get Tsunade-obachan to let me, err… us? Go. Worse than that, I still don't trust you, I mean, you said yourself you're clever, and you ARE a demon, so maybe you want me to go out alone, let the Akatsuki get me and let them rip you out of my stomach." He glared accusingly at the demon in question.

Kyuubi feigned offence, as much as a massive, grinning maw and seemingly unattached red eyes could appear to take offence at anything. This prompted another comment from the blonde. "Do you really have to look like that?" Again a red-eyed glare from the beast and it spoke

"**Actually I was about to show you why the Akatsuki taking me from you is going to kill us both. While at my initial rage, I would've been ecstatic even for death from you, before you were too old I had cooled my rage and resumed my plan. However, our bonding in this fashion…**" The red eyes closed and the mouth shut, leaving the place behind the cage unfathomably dark for a minute. Another passed. Naruto wondered what the flow of time was really like inside his own mind, when would it be when he awoke? He wondered, but he had no valid guesses.

The light snapped on, across the massive gate, revealing a wide rolling sea of green, after a moment, the blonde realized they were trees, in the distance he could see little, blurry shapes, the village, and the Hokage monument rising beyond that, with three faces on it. _Three?_

"That's how I remember it, at least." The blonde's eyes shot to the suddenly human-like voice, standing directly opposite the bars from himself. Brilliantly blue eyes widened in shock as they locked with mirroring orbs of crimson, the pupils slit vertically. "Don't be so surprised, the body belongs to both of us after all." It was Uzumaki Naruto's Mirror. Fucking. Image. Down to the bright orange 'kill-me' jumpsuit, the only difference was that his double lacked a hitai-ate, and his spiky hair was dark orange instead of bright blonde. The aforementioned eyes would be a redundancy, and Naruto believed in bluster, not repetition.

Naruto noticed something after he shocked out of his initial daze. "HEY! Weren't you criticizing my clothes earlier!" Kyuubi glared darkly back at him and responded in the same voice.

"I have an excuse! Besides these clothes rock, not stealthy but stylish! At least I'm not being a ninja in this getup, moron!"

"I'm not the moron, you're the moron!" The blonde shouted at the redhead.

"And a halfwit to boot!" the inevitable, well thought out retort.

The shouting match didn't end until the shared Naruto woke up, it was dark, and he was smiling genuinely. Tsunade… A problem they would address when it came up, and not before, for now… ICHIRAKU!

She'd seen him tell off the pink-haired girl on his team, when she doubted that he would get her heartthrob back, and she'd had to suppress a vindictive smile of triumph. After all, the boy no longer longed for Sakura, maybe he would notice her finally… Then again, she had seen his return as well, blood flowing freely from his wounds, and if she let herself trust her eyes, a fatal, gaping chest wound.

And then she'd been crying, weeping to the point of running dry of tears, and still sobbing uncontrollably. After all he was dead, the idealized image in her mind, the self-confidence she aspired to, the strength she knew was always there and always willing to help, it was gone. Dead. How could it not be dead with that wound?

Sunlight was filtering in through her window now, it must've been afternoon for that to happen, and while her sobbing had stopped, she still couldn't bring herself to care. _I never even told him what I felt, damnit, and now he's gone…_

Hyuuga Hiashi did not know about the rumors of the Uzumaki boy's death, he was above such pathetic matters as gossip. Of course, he didn't consider it gossip when he always heard how his firstborn daughter idolized the same boy that was, for a few hours, conjectured dead. His patience in learning why his daughter was crying so much had paid off, when, in the night he returned, a messenger arrived to inform him that his nephew was in critical condition, but expected to survive. He had asked after, and received, the status of the others on the team, including a description of the Uzumaki boy's wounds, and his departure just before the messenger left.

Hyuuga Hiashi was not a stupid man, but he didn't really have much in the way of common sense either. His logic, when it came to human interaction, was sorely lacking. So, because of that, he still had no idea why his daughter was in her room bawling her eyes out 'til all hours of the night. And now, she had missed two meals in one day, and hadn't yet left her room, that was more than he was willing to put up with, and he picked himself up and stalked through his own house to his daughter's bedroom door.

He threw the door open with full intent of being how he normally was, but then he saw her, huddled up, a complete mess, eyes bloodshot and cheeks puffy. With a sigh, he lost his brutal edge and slid the door shut behind him as he walked over, and sat on her bed, not yet looking to her face.

Neither one spoke for a long time, Hiashi extended his hand and wrapped it around that of his eldest daughter. She didn't recoil. A good sign, by his standards.

She broke the silence. "I should've said it…" The voice was so faint that for a moment, Hiashi confused it for his own thoughts. No, wait, that was Hinata.

He kept the surprise from his voice, but he couldn't hide his concern. "Should've said what?"

"That I admired him… I wanted to get closer to him, I should've told him how I felt, but he's dead now…"

He felt a twinge of jealousy, she'd never opened up like this to anyone. Wait, she wasn't stuttering… "Who?"

"n-n-" she started to sob again as she tried to say it, she didn't have any tears, but she managed to say his name despite the hiccupping and crying. "Naruto!"

Of course Naruto, she must've seen him come home, fool Hiashi! "He's alive Hinata, Tsunade-sama managed to heal him in time," of course, Tsunade-sama managed to let the demon fox heal him, but she didn't need to know that.

"Wha-?" She started to ask. That didn't make sense; it was a fatal wound, how could even the legendary medic-sannin Tsunade heal something like a hole in the chest?

"I have heard that he was walking around the village earlier, if you will clean yourself up and eat something, then I will allow you to skip today's training so you may speak with him." Much to his amusement his daughter's face did its normal flush and dance with a nervous heart-attack. But the pink slowly subsided and she shut her eyes at some great length, she resolved that she couldn't be so weak anymore.

"N-no, father… I have to train," She stood slowly, shrugging him off a bit, and moving towards her adjoining bathroom, snatching a set of clean clothes from her dresser as she moved. Her heart was still hurting with the thought of him being dead, and the temptation to just give up on him, but she pushed it out of her mind, along with the thoughts of failure. "Its not fitting for the Hyuuga heiress to feel such things for a simple commoner. Is it, father?" She spared a backwards glance at him, her eyes held a sharp edge of accusation as she mimicked his words.

Hiashi bit back his emotional retort, reminding himself of the law, "Uzumaki-san is no commoner Hinata. But if you are set on training today, then bathe, eat and meet your sister and I in the dojo," he turned and left the room, saddened that his daughter was finally finding a little bit of strength from abusing him. Maybe he deserved it.

(AHA! I have been struck by a muse and shall add the Sakura section! Author rubs a welt on his head where a muse punched him while grumbling)

Filler:

_Two more weeks. _Her green eyes looked at the clipboard, skimming over it and taking note of what it said about Sasuke's recovery time. Of course, that was healing naturally. It'd probably be okay to go see him tomorrow, he'd still be unconscious and surrounded by medics today after all.

Haruno Sakura walked through the streets of Konoha, her feet guiding her around the town, while her mind was worlds away. The brusque refusal still hurt, it was a shock to realize just how Naruto had so long felt about her, and it hurt more than a little to know that she had squandered a little brother. His cheerful cry of 'Sakrua-chan' and the wonderfully happy sound of his laughing even when she hit him on the head resounded in her mind.

Oh wait, no that was real.

She was just passing the Ichiraku ramen stand on her way home, and inside was the only guy who still went there this late at night. He was laughing and joking with the owner and his daughter.

She saw the scene when he had left.

The hurt, the betrayal, in his eyes.

The ragged hole going through the shoulder of his jacked, and the badly burned backside, shredded in places, the red spiral ominously singed to blackness over half the circle.

Then she noticed that the ramen chef's daughter had spotted her, and she ran towards her home, thinking all the way. _Two weeks, just two more weeks, and then I can have a role in this story again…_

End: Chapter Three "My Brother, the Professor": A Demon's Dream

(1): A private viewing of the next chapter for the person who guesses this reference right first.

Author Notes: Did I mention I needed a beta? Well the chapter didn't suck as much as I thought it would at first, but its not as long as I wanted. Remember folks, ten reviews will keep Ozymandius from crying! And it will make me post a new chapter too. Send inquiries about any other stories I've mentioned so far…


	4. Chapter 5 What Happened to Chapter 4!

Author Notes: Well now that's really an amazing thing, I hadn't expected to actually get those reviews. Well because you all gave me so much feedback (and so much of it was positive too) I will post this next chapter. And kudos to Xardoth, who will get the preview of chapter four… eventually…

Chapter Five "Haha! What Happened to Chapter Four!"

A Demon's Dream

Disclaimer: mmm… how can I say I own not Naruto? Let me count the ways…

And it went that smoothly for those who weren't directly involved in the matter, he showed that he wouldn't deal with it anymore, and then he disappeared. Hell, they didn't even notice he disappeared until a bunch of drunks filed a missing person's report, wondering where their punching bag had gone off to. The Rookie Nine, now short two members for the entirety of the foreseeable future, and with two still in critical care as well, were distraught at the loss of their group's apparent soul.

"I heard he had the worst injuries out of all of those that went on the mission, but he was released the same night, only a few hours later!" Ino, the loudest in Kiba and Naruto's absence, and definitely the best rumor-monger, was grilling Sakura for information while their group sat at, oddly, Ichiraku ramen.

They were all surprised when Hinata broke into the conversation, without stuttering, and with a voice that almost matched Kiba's in strength. "He was the worst off, Ino-san, he had a hole punched through his chest and his face was half carved off to boot. I saw it myself," she didn't acknowledge the other blonde's surprised glance as she slurped down some of the broth, but her bluster and confidence were making her insides shake with gleeful temerity. She was of course, quite frightened, but she was determined that she could fool them, and then she could be stronger.

"N-no way! Sasuke wouldn't do that! Not to his own teammate!" It didn't matter who said it, but it was incidentally Ino.

"Yes he would," three of the others, Shikamaru, Shino, and Sakura all said at the same time. The whole group looked at Shino, who had apparently studied with Kakashi, for his bowl was empty and none of them had seen his face while he ate. The bug-user shrugged at their attention, Sakura picked up where the other two left off.

"Ino we've both known that Sasuke was obsessed for a long time, that insanity is part of his hotness" Hinata rolled her eyes and Shikamaru muttered his trademark phrase. But no one interrupted the love-sick girl "He'd do anything to reach his goals, very definitely including trying to kill his 'best friend'… I just don't see how its possible he was out the night after that. Tsunade-sama shouldn't have even been able to heal those wounds."

"Perhaps she did not." Damn, bug-boy was talkative today. Hinata made a mental note to take the boy to more ramen, he seemed to speak more like this. The eyes focused on him were pleasantly inviting him to continue (read: threatening dire and lasting injury). "Naruto's strength and abilities always seem to match the situation he is presented with, increasing and decreasing accordingly. Coupled with the healing factor bloodline he has demonstrated, I believe that his own body may have healed itself."

The group quieted for a long moment, thinking on this bit of information. When Shino stood up and paid for his meal, Shikamaru spoke. "He's not unkillable, Shino, no-one is."

Shino paused, considering for a moment before he continued on his way. "Uzumaki does not need to be unkillable. He only needs to do his duty before he takes more damage than his bloodline can survive."

That rather well broke up their meeting, and the genin (and Shikamaru) paid for their meals and left. Ichiraku Teuchi and his daughter Ayame shared a knowing glance as the shinobi departed, but neither spoke a word. Naruto trusted them, and damned if they weren't going to honor that trust for all they were worth.

As a ninja, he preferred to travel in the fastest way possible.

For he, and most Konoha-nin, that would be leaping from branch to branch in the upper canopy. Failing that, in such a time as the present when there was no need for speed, he would've liked to walk, to dimly appreciate the nature around him. Neither was an option to him right now, because the other portion of Uzumaki Naruto was finally asserting itself, and proving to the stunned other half, that the seal _was_ quite inadequate.

That didn't mean the Kyuubi was running for Naruto, it just wasn't letting him walk, and it wasn't letting him leap in the trees. Worse than that, the blonde couldn't seem to want to, which was confusing to him, instead, he was forcing chakra into his legs and running as fast as he could. He'd been doing this since he met with Tsunade, and that had been some significant amount of time ago.

What had it been now? A day? Two? Only a few hours? A full week?

The ground gave small puffs of dirt as his feet lifted and slammed down again, and Uzumaki Naruto decided that it didn't matter how long he'd been running, because he wasn't hungry and he wasn't tired, his legs didn't even hurt because his muscles were healing up so quickly. He finally started to slow down, and then skidded to a stop, not well enough though as he still tipped forward and over the edge of a cliff.

Panic set in quickly, and he did the only thing that seemed logical to him.

"OH SSSSSHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII- huh?" the ground was not rushing up to meet him, and he could feel ground sliding beneath his feet. Ah. Kyuubi had lashed out and stuck his feet to the rock wall, but his chakra pathways were rather abused from the running, and he couldn't cling in place.

The ground was only a few feet from him now, so the blonde midget sprang off the rock and fell on the ground, and was almost instantly asleep, discovering suddenly that his geas-crafting half had been keeping his exhaustion from him.

The dungeon, once more. Well, Naruto's mindscape had once borne a striking resemblance to one, that or a sewer. But now… It was different.

"Like the new image here? Hell you mostly control what we do outside, I figured its my right to govern what our mind looks like right?" his nine-tailed counterpart asked from the other side of the bars. The blonde gave his other self a glare when he realized where they were.

"You decided to make it look like the Valley of the End?"

"Valley? I thought it was the Valet of the End…" Naruto sweatdropped at his other's cluelessness. Kyuubi was completely oblivious as he regarded the stone statues of… well of valet drivers and muttered something about humans and their similar words.

_Aren't you supposed to be the smart one?_ "Ah hell, it doesn't matter… Why did you want to remind me of this place exactly? And why doesn't your cage totally block you off from me?" He motioned to the substantial gap between the cage and the sides and bottom of the valley.

"Oh, yeah that, well basically the seal was designed to block the Kyuubi no Kitsune. Since I'm rapidly becoming less that and more the pseudo-demon half of Uzumaki Naruto, the seal is becoming moot and accordingly breaking. That combined with the fact that I wasn't nearly at my full strength when I attacked your village…" the fox trailed off as he regarded the gaps around the edges and the missing bars in the cage itself, poking at them inquisitively.

"Wait, the seal is breaking up? How is that even possible, does that mean you'll be free?" quickly noticing his easily disrupted twin was losing it, Kyuubi attempted to reassure him.

"Whoa! Wait up kid, now just think a minute, if that seal breaks up and I'm freed then we both die!" Now in full panic mode, the demon fox slapped his head and wondered why neither had ever developed good personal skills. "ehh… that came out wrong. Okay, hold on brat!" He reached through the bars of his cage and grabbed his other self by the scruff of his neck, and pulled him right up against the bars. "LISTEN 'A ME!"

Naruto shut up for a second, hyperventilating and still panicking.

"Ol' pops, I figure Yondaime _was_ your dad, didn't want us sent off to the Shinigami at the end of your life, so he made it such that the seal would break down and end Uzumaki's contract with the Death God, making it possible for us to do the normal bit of life after death, get it?"

Oddly, he seemed to. Kyuubi grumbled something and set him down. "There's a problem though… If this seal _does_ break down, it will obliterate both you and me, and Uzumaki Naruto won't be either of us anymore, he won't be who everyone knew him as anymore either. I don't want that. You don't want that. No one wants that. I've got a plan to stop it!" The other beamed a ridiculous smile.

After a few minutes, Naruto hesitantly asked "W-what's the plan…?"

"Not telling!"

Naruto slapped his forehead. "At least tell me why this is the Valley then?"

After the pause went on for thirty seconds, he looked up from his palm and saw him glaring at himself harshly. "To remind you of the villagers, your promise, and most importantly of all. To remind you of your hatred."

"So that's it, you really are going to help me become a demon aren't you?"

"I don't know what its going to be…" Showing his own unusual moment of wonderment. "but you and I are going to be something most curious, that's for sure."

Naruto groaned at his other self again, not sure precisely when he woke up. He was still in the Valley of the end and it seemed like dusk now, he stood up to watch the sun slowly sinking over the horizon and gave a soft sigh. Honestly, what the hell had Konoha _ever_ had on just this? It was peaceful and serene here… Except for a noisy giggling from somewhere behind him.

Giving a moment for himself to think about that simple statement made the blonde wonder just how giggling to be a noisy or obtrusive sound, but somehow the current giggler made it possible. That implied that if the impossible was being done in a harmless way, then either his pervert sensei Jiraiya was here (he discarded the notion because the Valley of the End had now popular bathing spots he knew of), his pervert sensei Kakashi was there (he discarded that notion too, because his sensei had promised not to follow him out here) or some other pervert was behind him.

So he spun on his heel and stuck an accusing finger at the source of the sound with one of his loudest ready-to-shout expressions on, but the denouncement died in his throat and his finger shifted direction while his eyes turned again to the size of dinner plates.

Few things in the world shocked Naruto, most of the things that did were just bizarre, the things that most people would say What The Fuck to, his mind scrambled in an attempt to take it as a real thing, ending up hurting him in the process. So naturally watching a huge statue hold a car door open for another stone giant, climb in and drive the massive rock vehicle away again caused a visible trail of smoke from his ears. "GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" he summarized his stance on the issue.

Kyuubi looked up from the fancy oak desk and the old fashioned typewriter he was tapping away at when he saw his other self wake, and gave him a rude look. "Are you going to complain that the Valet of the End are doing their jobs?"

"Wh-Wh-Whaa…?" The blonde deadpanned towards his clone on the other side of the inadequate cage. He stared at him and noticed the banner on the desk 'Author of the future bestseller: Inju Inju Yokai' the background image was… enough to make the genin fly backwards with a massive nosebleed and a huge grin, mostly because the yokai on the cover had whisker marks and yellow hair, while the girl had discarded a jacket bearing the legend 'gambler'. He rebounded to wakefulness after a second and carefully ignored the banner this time, and the statues. "Why am I still in the Valet of the End?"

"Oh that. Simple, I wanted to tell you to go see the grave of Zabuza," the statement prompted an overexcited Naruto to stare and jump with a grin.

"You're gonna teach me to use Zabuza's sword!"

Kyuubi blinked at him and then stepped forward to flick him in the head. "I used to be a demon, remember? What use would I have for a sword style? And why would you steal a dead man's sword, have you no honor?" The two stared at each other for a moment. "Never mind"

After a moment Naruto asked "So… why are we gonna go there then?"

Kyuubi returned to his desk and resumed typing again. "It'd do you good to see people you consider precious, besides, you need to honor the local spirits since you didn't last time, right?" Naruto gave a guilty nod. "Good, then its settled," he plucked a cigar from his mouth "now get outta here kid, ya bother me," and he forcibly ejected the other from the sealscape.

Waking with a sudden start and a slow throbbing in his legs, Naruto was surprised to find it was dark out already, the only illumination coming from the almost-full moon up above, casting the valley in a dark blue light. He smiled at it again, even at night it was so much the better than Konoha, and then started his run across the river and up the opposing rock face. As he began to channel chakra through the thin pathways in his legs he noticed the ache formerly present in them dulled and then faded away completely, he gave it the barest of thoughts before deciding that his chakra was being consumed the way the fox's was, his body not caring whether the chakra was demonic or mortal in origin.

That in and of itself carried disturbing implications as his body ran on chakra-boosted autopilot, his mind explored these implications. If his body used and two different chakras and achieved the same effect without any apparent increase in drainage -he certainly wasn't feeling any more tired right now than he normally would at this pace- then was there really a difference between the two chakras? His mind echoed with the Kyuubi's words _we are both only a half of Uzumaki Naruto_. Did that mean that who he thought he was wasn't really him? Was he Uzumaki Naruto or was he just a part of his personality?

In most cases where Naruto had been faced with other people facing the same kind of crisis of self, he had been in the position where his life was never full of the luxury with which to turn introspective. Since becoming a shinobi, he'd had to spend much less time fighting for his life from the betrayers who had assaulted him in the past, but instead of that he'd been fortunate enough with time-consuming missions and a desperate fixation with a certain emerald-eyed tramp, when neither had been presented to him he had spent his waking hours training fanatically, or doing his daily routines, managing to evade any questions he might have come to. The more active part of Uzumaki Naruto grimaced as he realized he was a coward, too afraid of himself and the real world to face it.

So for now Naruto decided that if he was, to the body and the person Uzumaki Naruto, the same as the demon fox was… Maybe there was validity to the demon's voiced complaints, if the seal was doing what it seemed like it was, maybe he wasn't even a demon anymore. Another sliver of his novice introspection asked the question that stopped his thinking completely.

_Are you sure that you're not a demon too?_

He shut his mind off at that point and focused on the terrain before him and pushing more chakra into his legs.

Kyuubi, and why not? He wasn't Kyuubi no Kitsune, that had died some years ago when the beast was sealed away, but he still was a being, an entity separate from his origin but still linked to it. Thus, with great reverence, the orange-clad redhead signed a grandiose version of the characters for nine-tails at the end of his first volume.

Deciding that the second volume could be written later, he peaked around the edge of the seal, watching the sky of Naruto's half of the sealscape. The orange haired creature reflected that his host was really a crappy ninja right now, not for his lack of stealth (after his own rampage to Konoha he really couldn't call anyone on a lack of stealth) but for his inability to take in and analyze his surroundings. Kyuubi reflected that perhaps that wasn't fair, after all, the boy was used to being completely safe in here, and he was strong enough that in most cases it didn't matter whether he was aware of it or not.

But still, the sky _burning_ on Naruto's half, and there were even the fine webs of white clouds stilling the fires close to the seal, really all but the barest range over the horizon was consumed in brilliant blue fire. Most who understood things about the mind, would recognize that the death god's seal was a depiction of the mind, like any depiction, it was chuck full of symbolism. Whereas the previous view had been the sewer, letting Kyuubi keep track of Naruto's mental state, and the amount of stress he was under, and the second (Konoha) had served to demonstrate his own ability to manipulate the sealscape, this current form served the main purpose of Kyuubi understanding Naruto's chakra and his body.

Kyuubi wondered vaguely why he was going over exactly how the current sealscape represented the other half, but chalked it up to being still in an author-ish mood.

Putting aside his reflection of moods, the Kyuubi observed the sky again, which had once been a serene blue, and was now a very angry, lightning-and-tsunami blue, undulating here and there as it lit or darkened. It was the kind of strange light show one would see if they were underwater, watching oil burn hot enough to be blue on the surface, except that the fire in this case seemed to look back, and it was filled with a strange, repressive anger. Staring at the fires of the sky filled the Kyuubi with an intense, impotent rage, and as soon as he looked away from it he felt angry, tired and depressed, he pushed out the influence of the fire from his mind and shuddered slightly.

Again Kyuubi was aware that he had once been completely a construct of abstract thought, that pillar of might had been powered by demonic chakra, but no one ever really bothered to explain what that was, or how it was different from regular chakra. Apparently people's thinking still affected the Kyuubi enough in Naruto's youth that his chakra had twisted and become something to match their imaginations, and so, Kyuubi knew what his chakra did to Naruto, and Uzumaki Naruto by extension. And to put it as simply as he could, Kyuubi decided that demonic chakra was among the most insidious, evil, corrupting, life-destroying drugs ever made by humanity.

Not technically a drug in the literal sense, it wasn't a thing to be ingested, but the body did consume it, and it had to come from an outside source. And it was addicting, terribly addicting, it just took more time than most drugs did to do it, which perhaps was all the more vile. Certain drugs (the Kyuubi had decided that he liked researching human vices) seemed to addict rather rapidly, the change in personality apparent, and the user themselves became aware of the problem, mostly because their bodies could go into withdrawal.

Demonic chakra did something different, it amplified and carried the emotions of the source, it healed over damage with astonishing speed it was inhumanly potent… But cells touched by the chakra were subtly twisted by it, not a problem if it was only used in short, sporadic bursts, cells died off and were replaced fast enough it didn't matter. A source of constant demon chakra though, would continue to train the body to accept chakra working just like demon chakra, when the flow cut off, it demanded the same of normal chakra, and then the body and the inner coils did their work.

That was what the burning sky showed the Kyuubi, it told him that almost all of the chakra his vessel's body was pumping out was demonic in origin. Did that mean Naruto was in fact a demon now? No, but it meant he was becoming more like one, his chakra pathways were slowly becoming used to his own potent chakra now as well, the fine web of white lines in the sky told him as much. Maybe the past fourteen years were enough to totally addict the blonde's system, would his personality start to change now that he was picking up that predilection towards demonhood (1)? Kyuubi doubted it. The boy _did _have an almost indomitable spirit after all… Still this was cause for concern, the fact that the sun hadn't set yet on his side meant he still clung fiercely to his humanity, they needed to be rid of that, and the sooner the better.

Naruto, his mind firmly rooted in the present, glanced down at his orange-clad legs, which still felt perfectly fine even after he had run the entire way to the Great Naruto Bridge. Again, he had gotten himself moving so fast that he had a hard time slowing, and he gritted his teeth angrily as he dug two long furrows through the dense earth of this merchant trail. Desperately trying he pushed more of his chakra through his legs, applying the water-walking technique to try to stick himself in place.

It half worked, his feet stuck to the ground now, and he had stopped moving. On the other point his body still had a lot of momentum built up so when his feet stopped, the rest of him went on, pulling him forward, over, and into the stonework bridge face-first. He lay still for a few minutes before his feet shot out to a less agonizing pose, chakra ceasing to flow to them, and releasing them with a 'pop' sound.

All of this had been observed by an old, wizened man leading a team of oxen with an empty cart. The fashion he dressed in suggested he was from Water country, perhaps even the hidden village of the mist, given the oversized beatstick strapped to his back. The man paused a moment, observing, prodded the leaf-nin with his shoe and got no reaction. Presuming the boy was dead, he shrugged, and led his oxen and empty cart _over_ the boy's body. The ox, being a kinder soul than its retainer, stepped over the boy, rather than on him.

Sadly (for Naruto at least) the heavy cart still had to roll over him. And roll it did, crushing his shoulder and a few ribs, and if that sickening crack was right, probably one of his thighs as well. As the night stretched on, as it tends to do, another passing merchant had also presumed the boy dead, and rolled him off to the side of the bridge, his mashed face now planted firmly against a small bronze plaque bearing the dedication of the bridge.

The merchant moved on into the city, curious why there was a dead body wearing such bright clothes at the base of the bridge. He would get an answer, a terrifying one albeit, later on that week, but for the moment he was eager to unload the cargo of silks he had. As the sun rose up the next morning, the dead body groaned unpleasantly, and lifted itself up and took a brief internal check.

Naruto hadn't always been one for introspection, last night's experience had assured him that it was an unpleasant thing, not meant for man in his sanity to endure. But at the moment, he decided it was a necessary evil. Kinda like vegetables. Fortunately for most everyone, Naruto's brain function was quite slow at dawn, and so it took him a long time to realize that all his injuries still hurt like he had just gotten them, although they had already healed. When the pain from his body reached his brain, it patiently waited for all of it to arrive, and then unceremoniously hit the blonde's cognitive capacities all at once.

Even though he suddenly understood the pain, it took another two minutes before he reacted.

"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!" was his self-deemed appropriate response. It frightened small children in the country of Wave, and made little animals run for shelter near the Valley of the End.

Kyuubi winced too for good measure.

The reaction had gotten him to wake up, but hadn't alleviated all of his anger, or his pain yet, so he expounded on the word in a calm and clearly thought out process to explain his particular mood with regard to this current setting. "Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, this, really, hurts, FUCK fuck fuck." His demeanor shifted a bit as he began using more colorful, less uniform lines. Thoughtfully provided by his other half.

"Godfuckingdamnitwhothehellrunsoversomestupidwoundedpersonlyingintheroad!" After he'd calmed down for a minute, finally getting over it, he looked around where he'd been, and noticed the bronze plaque, bearing the words 'In dedication to Tazuna, who gave the village back its prosperity' he snorted at the plaque unamusedly and walked on, leave to the cranky old drunk to take all the credit.

Honestly, didn't the guy have any decency? Kakashi did a lot of work for the bridge too, Sasuke almost died, and Sakura had protected Tazuna throughout the whole thing, even if she didn't fight so much. Hell, Zabuza had killed Gatou, and Haku had died for Zabuza. And Uzumaki Naruto had… had…

And Uzumaki Naruto had a giant bronze-looking statue of himself looking at the bridge with a huge fox-like grin and his thumb stuck forward in an approving manner. Well then. That was certainly a fascinating development. Naruto and Kyuubi were both, for once, shocked into silence at what they had achieved together.

Picking up his jaw from the ground, Naruto looked to the little plaque at its base… Well little in comparison to the statue. This plaque read differently than the other, it said 'The people of Wave country, have forever been changed by the interference of one boy. When we had lost our spirit, and our courage, he showed us the lighted path, the path to freedom, prosperity, strength, and pride. In honor of the boy who gave us everything, we dedicate our country to his name, his way.' – Tsunami, founder of the Wave ninja academy, in reference to Uzumaki Naruto (2).

Naruto continued to stare at the plaque for some considerable time, despite his scream, most of the village was still asleep, given that it was just after dawn. One particular person who was awake, stepped out of a restaurant stall to see a boy who he was sure was dead, standing beneath a statue of himself. The silk-trader blinked, and when he looked back again, the boy was gone. The trader fainted on the spot.

End Chapter Five: What happened to chapter four!

(1): Note the use of the term predilection, that means tendency towards, not necessarily that he is a demon. Yet. As he gets closer to it, Naruto is being tempted by the power there, hence the tendency but not the completion.

(2): Honestly, this is bugging me, I know I deviated from canon, but it is a fanfiction, the main issue is this; Why is it that there are so many TsunadexNaruto fictions, but not a single TsunamixNaruto, even when the times where he leaves the village he normally does go to wave? She's closer to his age, or is it because she's a mother? If anyone says its because she isn't defined so much as a character, go look at any pairing in the world, people pull personally histories from thin-air, if not slightly less cleanly places.

Author Note: Well… Finished the chapter, if I post it either one person begged me or ten people reviewed. Uhm… I don't know if I like this one or not, but I guess it doesn't matter much. Anyway, ja ne (author dons a valet driver's cap).


	5. Chapter 6: Courage, Innocence, Questions

Author Note: Holy crap that's a lot of response right off the bat. Honestly, I'm flattered by all the attention and I hope that I can continue to do right by you folks. As to the questions of TsunamixNaruto, believe me when I say I was tempted to do it, but I don't think there will be a pairing in this fic. I know wave's ninja academy isn't canon, and the Kyuubi is beyond ooc (but honestly he wasn't much worked with as a character), and to a degree Naruto still acts like he did. I'll give a little bit of analysis for that stuff during this chapter, and at the ending notes. Enjoy.

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Six: Courage, Innocence, and a growing list of questions.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto! Really! If I did, then… then… uhm…

He was still staring at the plaque, re-reading it, over and over and then glancing up periodically at the statue. So far it was about noon, and no one had bothered him yet, because this was the part of the village where the fewest actual villagers were. Thus, people who passed by and happened to notice him, didn't pay much attention to him. Of course, eventually it had to happen.

By noon, the crotchety old man had rolled himself out of bed, and had begun his 'morning' ablutions. For most bachelors this would be the standby shit, shower and shave, then dressing and possibly leaving the house if necessary. For Tazuna, these included a warmed bottle of sake, a shower, another bottle of sake, a dose of headache medicine and a little paperwork.

As much as Tsunade hated paperwork, she only had to deal with the mission approvals, assignments etc. She only governed a military aspect of a city, she did not have to almost single-handedly deal with the paperwork of an entire village's (a trade village no less) civilian population. Tazuna glared venomously at the piles of paperwork on his desk and shook his head, deciding that it could wait. He pulled his old hat from a hanger and walked out into the bright noon-time sun. Giving a brief consideration of where to go, his feet automatically began walking him towards the Great Naruto Bridge, and the statue.

When he did actually arrive there from his home in the middle of the now thriving village, Tazuna noted someone was standing at the base of the statue. This wasn't abnormal, but scant few people had fashion sense as bad as Uzumaki Naruto, and so the orange clothes that he wore were fairly well unforgettable.

Tazuna had learned, after Zabuza's defeat that the genin of team seven were all fairly new and so he had presumed that after some time Naruto would have given up on the bright orange clothes.

So the boy standing underneath the statue with the bright blonde hair and the brilliant blue eyes had to be a hallucination. Even if it was, he couldn't bring himself to look away, he wanted it to be Naruto, and if he said anything it was likely his hallucination would be shattered. For lack of any other alternative… Tazuna stood stock still and stared at the boy.

After a minute or two of being stared at, Naruto looked up from the plaque and saw Tazuna standing transfixed. A grin spread across his face as he walked over to the graying man with a darker tan than himself. His hand shot into the air in an overexcited and cheerful wave, swiftly followed by his obnoxious voice. "Heeey! Tazuna-san!" The blonde slowed as he drew nearer to the still numb and staring bridge-builder. "Eh… Tazuna-san? You okay?" From behind his new gold-rimmed glasses, Tazuna still stared at the blonde ninja in front of him.

_It really is him, what's he doing back here again?_ "Naruto?" The old man asked hesitantly, still wary that his decrepit eyes might be playing tricks on him.

"Well… yeah, I'm pretty sure at least, why? Were you expecting someone else?" Naruto looked at the older man with something approaching genuine concern.

The concern quickly evaporated, replaced by a certain expression of fear as the elderly bridge-builder suddenly whooped and cheered before slinging an arm around the young ninja's neck and bodily dragging him away into the town. "Tsunami will be so happy to see you, and Inari too! EVERYONE will be happy to see you again! Why didn't you tell me you were coming by? …" he continued on with his long talk, the blonde too surprised and caught up in the unusual display of affection, not that Tazuna was giving him a chance to interrupt.

Mostly life went on in the Traveler's Yard, the few veterans of this particular trade route were surprised enough to notice, and raise their eyebrows at the village leader's sudden and uncharacteristic happiness. By and large though, the merchants and travelers ignored them, and went on about their jobs with the greedy laziness they had grown accustomed to.

Not for the first time, Naruto was struck by the strangeness of it all, and had to question; _just what am I doing here anyway?_ By here, people who asked this question usually meant the earth, that particular point in their life, etc. Naruto on the other hand meant it in a much more practical sense. He was curious as to how, in the name of several hells, he had managed to end up in a very small classroom in the most bizarrely laid-out building he'd ever seen.

Okay, so it wasn't mind-numbingly strange, but the entire building was only a single floor, and all of it encircled a broad, grassy field. The six desks in this room all faced towards the field, and the open doorways on either side of the blackboard would've provided a great line of sight to the people who occupied what could only be a training field.

Naruto was curious about this, obviously this would have to be the ninja academy he'd heard about, but its layout and the small class size seemed strange to him. Furthermore, how could they be doing anything? When he'd first been here, there hadn't been anyone who knew a damn thing about Chakra theory, much less any jutsus. So what the hell was going on here then? His brain was wracking itself trying to figure out how the building he was in got here, and to its current state, and how he'd gotten into it.

His attempts at figuring things out were interrupted by a sudden loud sound and an almost instantly subsequent crushing sensation that made his eyes go wide, before he realized that this was a hug. Blue eyes tried to move further than the limit of the skull they were pressed into, but all he got was a glimpse of silky, almost-black hair and a dull-green shirt. His sense of smell gave him a bit more to go off of, telling him that it indeed smelled pleasant and mostly clean, a vague hint of sweat indicating that she (his mind had concluded this was a woman) was training probably just before being told he was here.

"Naruto! I can't believe you came back again! I'm so happy to see you!" She pushed him back again and beamed in an almost carbon-copy of his fox grin.

The blonde blinked dumbly at her for a minute, taking note of the overall well-toned body that gripped his shoulders. Her face was pretty, in a mature kind of way, although Naruto was certain she was younger than Tsunade's illusion was, and though her body was now well-toned and unobtrusively muscled, she had a comforting, almost motherly feel about her. "Ts-Tsunami-neechan?" his voice faltered as he tried to speak, and he wondered why for a moment, dismissing it quickly as thoroughly irrelevant.

"Yep! So you remember me huh? Well that's good," She smiled and hugged him again, this time in a less crushing way. "It's really good to see you again Naruto, I wish we had time to talk a bit, but my class is coming soon. Hey why don't you stick around? The kids could use a real ninja for once," as she backed off again and asked him that, he could only blink in curiosity, but he nodded happily after a minute of half-thought.

"Sure thing, neechan, but I warn ya, I'm not really a great teacher. Excellent ninja, yes, but we knew that already!" He beamed proudly at her and held out a thumbs-up, prompting a quiet laugh from the apparent teacher.

Like the previous question, he filed his thoughts about just why he was instantly agreeing to help as unimportant, and to be dealt with when he had the time later. Tsunami looked about to say something further, but the sounds outside of giggling and running disrupted her train of thought.

As she smiled at him and retreated towards the blackboard, Naruto had to do a double-take. In an instant she had gone from sweet, motherly Tsunami, to a harsh-looking sadistic woman with more an Anko-like gleam in her eyes. _What have I gotten myself into?_ He had to ask. At a beckoning motion he joined her by the blackboard just seconds before six blurs sped into the room and into their seats. He shook himself a bit and made his eyes assess the (he assumed again) students.

One bench and table on one side of an outward facing door, a matching set on the other side of the outward-facing door. Teams, he realized, they were training them to be teams from the start, that was _brilliant_! Revising his study, he quickly assessed the children in this new light. (Begin note 1)

To his left were three garishly dressed cadets, one had bright red hair tied back in a messy ponytail, aside from the insane look in his eyes and his smile, Naruto might have thought him Shikamaru's cousin with better dress sense. Next to him was a girl with hair the same sea-foam green as Tsunami's clothes, she had a more intelligent look about her and a pleasant, agreeable air. Next to her was another girl who Naruto swore was the illegitimate love-child of Shino and Kiba; hair that was moderately long, spiked straight up, wearing dark sunglasses with apparent diminutive fangs and nasty-looking claws. All three wore white t-shirts under orange vests and pants, with their forearms bandaged and a kunai sheathed at their upper arm.

Shuddering slightly, he looked to the other half of the room, and was forced to blink again in astonishment. The first kid he saw was a boy trying desperately to emulate Kakashi, badly spiked silver-dyed hair (he knew it was dye because he saw the black roots just peeking out), the mask, and an all dark-blue jumpsuit, complete with armored gloves. Next to the Kakashi-clone sat an average looking boy, hair rather close-cropped normal dark brown eyes, a carefully neutral expression, and a deck of playing cards in hand. On the poker-kid's other side sat a girl with sandy blonde hair and more freckles than he figured was healthy, sleeping at her desk. (End note 1)

Naruto looked to Tsunami, clearly hoping for some kind of explanation, or better yet, an introduction. She caught the look and gave him a slight grin that did nothing to reassure the blonde genin. Her words, when she finally spoke, confirmed his fears.

"Okay class… This is Uzumaki Naruto, he's just gotten in town today. Apparently he's been slacking off since he hasn't been training all this morning like us!" All morning? Slacking off? Oo-h-oh no, he could guess where this was going. "But unlike us all, he's a real ninja and knows a bunch of ninjutsu, so we're gonna skip our chakra-theory lesson today and go right to work getting some practice in with our ninjutsu! Isn't that great?" There were mixed reactions from the class, some groans, some smirks, and one exceptionally loud snore. He sensed Tsunami beside him gathering her chakra, and realized that she had already been pushing more chakra than was needed through her body. He wondered quickly if that was healthy, then again he did it all the time so how couldn't it be healthy and safe?

He channeled chakra throughout his own body, and was momentarily surprised as his curiosity became suddenly more pressing. He fought it back down and glanced at the children still sitting, and then he realized that they too were all channeling chakra in similar manners. Trying to figure out how first year academy students were managing to do that, he almost missed Tsunami bolting out of the room, he quickly followed after her, and having some considerable bit more experience with the practice, quickly caught up to her.

"Hey, Tsunami-neechan, where the hell are we going? And what did you mean when you said that you guys would practice your ninjutsu, I didn't think that wave village had any ninja?" He would've kept on questioning her but the look she gave him (a rather threatening one) struck a bit of fear in him, that little bit snowballed into a rush that stopped his mouth and almost made him falter in his step, inwardly he questioned why that was so scary, just what the hell was going on with him?

Tsunami stopped short in a training field, and Naruto quickly followed suit albeit lacking the grace with which she had simply halted. He gave an inquisitive look to the teacher and asked her "Okay, now I have to know, I've been running like that a lot lately and every time I stop I end up face-planting. How'd you not do it?"

The woman blinked at him in frank surprise as her six students arrived and stopped with the sudden, easy grace that she had. "You honestly don't know? You just throw the chakra you've been channeling out of your body all at once. The chakra going forward absorbs your momentum, going backward stops the gust of wind that would follow you, obviously latching to the ground helps you stay and the sides keep you stable. Don't they teach this in Konoha?" At Naruto's blank look, she shrugged and looked to the two teams again. "Alright everyone, apparently Konoha has a different training policy than we do, so why don't we give our guest a brief summary of our methods here in Wave Country?"

The red-haired crazy boy spoke up first. "In order to train chakra control and capacity, we use chakra constantly, way more than we would normally to do everything, it makes us move faster and hit harder, we almost exhaust ourselves everyday so that our capacities grow faster. Since we don't know any real jutsu, we've been creating our own techniques based on raw chakra expression," he beamed proudly as he yanked his kunai from its arm-sheathe, and cool blue chakra wrapped around the blade, flowing further and making it seem more like a short sword.

The vessel gave an appreciative whistle at the thought. This was really a fairly clever idea, and he was really curious to learn what kind of jutsus they had been able to develop, he grinned his fox grin and his eyes glinted subtly. "Well before I ask for a display of your skills, let me show you some of my jutsu!" He tapped his chin thoughtfully and wished Tazuna or any of the other innumerable old perverts were there. He gave a sigh, realizing it was not meant to be. "Well I can't show you my first original technique today, for lack of an appropriate victim, but I suppose…" He made a single seal and his chakra flared around him before he shouted "KAGE BUNSHIN NO JUTSU!" and filled up the training area with chakra-laden smoke and copies of himself. The Naruto clones called out a collective 'yo!' to the stunned cadets, and all but a single one poofed away again into nothingness.

"Now this technique was made by the Yondaime, and taught to me by the Yondaime's and my own teacher, its got no seals and I can't teach you it, but I think some of you might be able to figure it out. You've gotta all promise never to teach it to anyone else if you do figure it out. Showing off with it is a bit shallow of me, but this technique was basically custom-made for people without hand-seals. So do ya promise?" At the various nods he received, he and his clone walked over by a tree, he stuck out his hand and began spinning chakra in his palm, the clone kept pawing at the distending ring of chakra and air, disrupting the flow and creating new directions, the spins increased exponentially, held within the sphere as he pumped ever more chakra into it. His eyes lit blue from within, glowing with the same light of the spinning orb, his clone poofed into nothingness and he thrust his hand forward with a cry of "RASENGAN!"

The tree did not have a good day that day, as a spinning ball of energy and air ripped through its bark and cork and then the meat of the tree, and exploded wildly inside, shredding the trunk and letting the tree groan in protest. In a display of rare self-preservation instincts, the blonde rolled away as the tree toppled over in his general direction and smashed into the ground. Standing up and dusting himself off, Naruto gave a sheepish grin to his audience as he scratched the back of his head, "Ehh… hehe, guess I overdid that a bit. Whaddya think?" Their awestruck looks were quite the ego boost for the distraught demon-boy.

That was the day's high point, the rest of it being filled with the teams taking it in turns to impress the ninja with control and stamina that were about normal genin level. He was, needless to say, floored by this fact, because these were just kids, in their first years as academy students. He filed away a mental note to never mess with Wave ninja. As the sun began to set he followed a once more sane-looking Tsunami back to her home.

Naruto looked around Tsunami's home, the same place he and team seven had stayed in when they first came to wave country, he had to smile a little in nostalgia before Tsunami sat him down at the table and turned her attention to the adjoining kitchen area. He had tried to resist and offer to help her with the food, but she gave him a look that said 'Do as I say or I'll do Something that you won't like'. With no idea what it would be, Naruto had no desire to experience Something.

So he sat, attempting to still his rapidly beating heart. Tsunami meanwhile began to cook and called back to him. "What do you think of our cadets?"

Naruto blinked and brought himself back into the moment, out of his silent reverie, "They're really impressive, you guys do all that every day? I'm pretty sure that that's not really healthy for normal humans to do…" He realized his slip and bit his tongue angrily. _Stupid, now she'll be onto you._

There was a long, quiet moment as she chopped vegetables and pulled a couple of pieces of thoroughly marinated meat back out of the refrigerator. Turning away from the meal, and leaving it to cook, she came back and sat down beside him at the table with a quiet sigh. "I know it isn't. I hate having to do it to these kids, but like I said, we don't have any real ninja, and we don't know any of the techniques or things that established villages do. As it is, this is the only way we can become strong enough to make sure something like Gatou never happens to Wave again…" she trailed off with a faraway look in her eyes.

Naruto's brows scrunched together "Why didn't you send for some ninja from Konoha to come and teach your teachers or the kids?"

"We did." Came her simple answer, at Naruto's lack of response she expounded. "I sent to Konoha for some chuunin or jounin to come and help us set up the school failing that we wanted to barter for some technique scrolls. The response we got was a swift and immediate refusal, on the grounds that we had wronged the village of leaf, and needlessly risked the lives of two geniuses and another genin."

"WHAT! Ojiisan would have never done that! I thought Hokage-ojiisan was a good guy…" Naruto's face bore a mixture of confusion and betrayal as he looked down to the ground.

"Hokage? That response was from the village's council. We tried to approach the hidden mist with the same deal, but all they were willing to give us were some scrolls about basic and advanced chakra theory. We still wanted to mend our ties with the leaf, for your sake Naruto, so we didn't ask the hidden cloud or stone." She gave him a small smile. "But you're here now, and you can teach us some of your techniques right?"

Naruto winced under her smile, and shut his eyes tightly, wishing she didn't have so much faith in him. She apparently didn't notice as she almost immediately returned to the cooking. He looked glumly at the table, planting his hands on his legs as he gave more thought to the situation. The time slipped by and before he realized it, a plate with a piece of teriyaki beef on it, with vegetables at the side, and a bowl of rice with it. He had to smile at the fare, it was far better than his normal meal.

She served herself and placed the remainder of the rice between the two on the table. In the same manner that he had upon his first arrival, they both exaggeratedly clapped their hands together and said 'itadakimasu'. Naruto glanced at Tsunami, quizzical at her mimicry of his mannerisms, she gave him his own fox grin in reply. They shrugged and ate with equal abandon, neither feeling terribly like speaking while they ate.

When he'd had his fill, Naruto turned and beamed at Tsunami once more, "Thanks Tsunami-neechan, that was great!" The ninja teacher blushed a bit under the praise, in her mind the food was improvised, quick, filling. She wondered why he thought so highly of it.

"Well I'm glad you enjoyed it Naruto, you know how you can pay me back…" She gave him a small grin, and he looked away, just a bit ashamed. That gave her pause, she let up and put a hand on his back to comfort him. Though given the way he stiffened at the contact, she wondered if this were the proper way to go about it. "Naruto? Are… Are you okay?"

The boy gave himself a small moment to compose his answer, what precisely should he tell her? The truth, he decided. "I'm, really sorry Tsunami-san. I wish I could give you what the village really needs right now, but frankly, you're doing what always helped me to get better when I was a kid. But that's not right, you're all only human and you're pushing too hard.

"The reason why I never got chakra exhaustion, or was left so spent and tired that the villagers would have been able to kill me, is the same reason they wanted to kill me in the first place and why no one trained me. It's the same reason I don't have any jutsu to really offer Wave.

"When I was born, there was a demon fox with nine tails that attacked the village, no one knew why or how, and really there was no reason. The fox was there because it had discovered our leader was the strongest shinobi in the world at the time. When it arrived here, it could only feel and think how it was born to feel and think, the need to destroy and kill were its only motivations. Yondaime-sama knew none of this, but he saw the demon kill shinobi by the score, and flatten sections of the village with the catastrophic damage his tails wrought." Tsunami looked more than a little confused as the blonde carried on, but said nothing.

"The Yondaime, I think, was my father, and that's what gave him a thought. He signed a contract with the shinigami, that he would give his soul in exchange for Kyuubi's essence being confined within a seal. The death god agreed, and it happened like that, Yondaime sealed the demon into me, and his soul was consumed by the shinigami. That deal meant that when I died, both Kyuubi and I would also be eaten by the shinigami, and he couldn't stand for that, so he designed the seal to let the Kyuubi and my own soul merge together.

"But… He didn't expect how powerful Kyuubi really was, because the seal was never enough to completely hold him back, and he never understood fully what a demon was, because from the moment he was sealed in me, Kyuubi stopped being The Kyuubi. I stopped being just me too at that time. The seal was always pulling his chakra through, it kept healing me, the damage when I over-trained myself would vanish after a good rest, my chakra reserves expanded at an unnatural rate just because the flow of his chakra had to press against the limits of my pathways. What I did should have killed me but it didn't. It only didn't because I am not completely human, I don't want to see Wave do that to its children," He closed his eyes tightly again and stopped himself from crying, just what would Inari think of the hero crying?

"Naruto…" She started, but what could she say? She didn't care a damn bit about the demon sealed in him, but were they really killing the children? It was hard for her to figure out. "Look, you're tired, I'm tired, we both need rest." Naruto turned to her and blinked in blatant surprise that she was still being amiable towards him. His stomach twisted around a bit as he nodded and smiled a bit at her. She pointed at another room down the hall as she turned and adjourned into one of the two rooms still furnished as sleeping quarters.

He slipped the door closed behind him, shucked his travel pack down (2) against the door, stripped down to his boxers and threw himself into the bed, falling asleep faster than he could say "Leroy Jenkins". Though why he would, shall never be known.

Kyuubi glared across the seal at his other self and shook his head in an angry sort of way. He stood up from his desk and walked to the ever-shrinking cage. At present it was less than half of the width of the Valet itself, where its edges began to disappear were slow motes of black dust. He stared at the lump of person on the other side of the now quite transparent barrier, and decided he wished he knew what Excedrin was.

"WAKE UP DAMNIT!" That seemed good enough to alleviate the stress. Or rather, the reaction of his suddenly bolt-upright and awake friend was. He had to laugh in that obnoxious Uzumaki laugh as he stuck out an accusing finger at the other's reaction.

Naruto snarled in apparently sleepy rage and stumbled to his feet, fully intent on kicking his kage bunshin's ass. Until he dazedly realized that this was not where he had fallen asleep, and his kage bunshins did not have orange hair or red eyes, or claws (except when he was really pissed off) or, usually, nine flowing fox-tails. Ah yes, the seal. That was where he was then, okay.

This decided, he charged forward against Kyuubi and slammed full-tilt into the invisible barrier of the seal. Now it should be noted that gently pressing against the barrier continuously had allowed Kyuubi's chakra to flow freely into him, in minute amounts, brute strength against it had given him a headache. Naruto found out now, that the seal was quite extant. As his head swirled, he looked up at the sky from his prone position, and noticed that it was, in fact, on fire.

Following the flames, they consumed the entire sky, and were calmed by thin white clouds that looked more like veins. Had Naruto been an industrious and good student, he would have questioned why exactly the setting sun was imposed _over_ the burning sky and vein-like cloud. He sat up slowly, becoming very alert quite suddenly as his eyes came to rest on the seal itself. "Oh shit, that _cannot_ be good…"

Naruto was not a bright child, never book smart, and he'd not had much experience. But he learned quickly, and he knew how to keep aware enough of things that were dangerous, people around you having the potential, and inclination to kill you continuously had that effect. He got the same feeling of imminent death and suffering from the almost nonexistent barrier that seemed to be disintegrating as he watched; the sky being on fire and covered in webby clouds didn't help. Kyuubi briefly nodded to his other's assessment.

"No it isn't good. We've got just over a day before that seal goes out and we die. I warn you now, it's not going to be clean or easy to break free of that, and it will be dangerous. You have to get out of wave, and you have to do it first thing in the morning. Do you understand?"

Naruto gave a slight nod, eyes fixed on the seal, almost able to observe it dissipating. "Kyuubi, how the fuck are going to not die?" Kyuubi looked at him quite seriously from across the barrier.

"Naruto my brother… We will die. Just we've got a better deal with the whole reincarnating thing." The blonde seemed to sink a little at the Kyuubi's words. Just before banishing Naruto from the seal, Kyuubi spoke again "Just trust me, I've had this plan for millennia, and nothing will stop us now."

His advice dispensed, Kyuubi banished his 'brother' into the oblivion of a dreamless sleep.

End Chapter Six: Courage, Innocence and a growing list of questions.

(1): No, I am NOT going to turn this into a Naruto is teaching a team of oc students fic, this fic is not going to center on them little brats.

(2): Yes, he's been wearing that pack the whole time, I never said he set it down. Yes it would probably be uncomfortable, but no more so than trying to fight Zabuza as a genin with a backpack loaded with weapons.

(3): Don't let Aidis fool you, he's been a great help so far with the making coherentness of the story. Its late, I'm sleepy, don't kvetch about that not being a word.

Author Note: Geez, I really hate this chapter… Anyway next chapter should be most entertaining(relatively speaking). I had originally planned to do much more here in Wave, but I decided the Kyuubi wasn't getting enough face time. At present I'm not exactly sure what I plan to do with wave, and I probably won't put in a pairing. As for canon/non-canon, I've only watched the anime, says so on my profile. I don't dislike the manga just… I dunno. Mm…. that's really about it that I can think of right now… Oh yeah, question about all this. If I do decide to make a pairing, should it be Naruto and Tsunami or Naruto and Isaribi, who was in the anime filler arc Kishimoto helped out with? And yes, those are your only choices, unless someone can give me a damn good reason for another one, message the votes please.


	6. Chapter 7: UWATTIW

Author note: I'm not writing this chapter in third person… well not for most of it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto

Chapter Seven: Us Who Are the Thing That Is We

The sun crept up over the horizon, its first rays cast a gray glow throughout the household. It woke a blonde ninja to a zombie-like stupor. Said ninja pulled out a fresh set of clothes and a blank scroll and brush. Sitting at a table he wrote out in a horrid chicken-scratch some advice and an apology. That finished, he left the house and ran at a considerable speed away from the village, and the country.

His chakra-boosted legs pumped furiously over the water, the sea itself as the shore became distant behind him. Demonic chakra pulsed out from each footstep in all directions, the chakra touched and corrupted or twisted life it touched as the blonde subconsciously gave Wave country the exclusive market on rare and exotic demon-fish.

As the slimy grasp of sleep fell away, Naruto looked around, still on the water, wondering where he was. There were canyon walls on either side of him, he turned and looked across the seal that kept pace with him and to Kyuubi on the other side.

Naruto's POV

_Am I in the Valet still? _I looked around a bit, concentrating, there were no canyon walls, well there were but they were superimposed on the sea all around me… My eyes went back to Kyuubi and I folded my arms over my chest giving him a disbelieving glare.

"**You don't have the time for that look, you have to make it there**" he pointed at the sun, setting on the horizon still "**before the seal goes out. Now hurry yourself, just focus on getting there. Nothing else matters, alright?**" I wanted to insist, to keep saying that he needed to explain it to me, but damnit, he was just that little bit smarter than me and just that little bit stronger. I turned my back on the seal, and channeled that; I didn't know that it was demonic chakra then, I just used it.

My legs moved, I don't remember if I was running, but Uzumaki Naruto was moving at pace, and I kept my eyes fixed on the sun. Just staring at the tarnished gold disk I started picking out details of it, it was mostly golden yellow, like my hair, but there were so many bits of dark orange, red, even black that blurred through it that it looked like it was almost bronze. As I looked closer, the thin white clouds that pulsed behind the sun seemed to draw off the black blurs, and siphon them away into the web of the whole sky, whenever it happened I felt a cold, hard ping in my heart and the back of my mind, and Uzumaki Naruto ran a little faster, a little harder.

I stared a little closer each time too. And I started seeing things in those blurs of color across the bright gold disk. A flash of red came through the sun, and time slowed as I saw it happen again; _Haku prepared another volley of needles, Sasuke had been standing over me, protecting me, then Sasuke was down with the needles in his neck and over his torso… _Rage from that welled up in me, and it built and built and built, then the blur was gone again, replaced by a streak of pure white: _Shizune-neechan and I were walking side by side again a little behind Ero-sennin and Baachan, I was telling her about catching that stupid cat again and she was smiling and laughing with me… _I laughed out loud at that even as I was frothing, shaking with rage from the previous emotion. I laughed and growled so powerfully at the same time I almost cried, I did cry actually as a black spot crossed by the sun, and I saw Sakura for the last time again… Just before I went to beat down Sasuke.

I remember feeling all of that while I stared, I needed to stop to cry and laugh and claw at the earth until I could feel again, but Uzumaki Naruto kept running, wouldn't stop despite my constant calls for rest. I felt water under my feet while I saw trees creep through the superimposed sealscape in my peripheral vision. I felt liquid on my face, rolling down my cheeks when another memory came by, I don't recall what it was, I touched the tears, but they felt… wrong, so I held my hands up to see what was on them.

My eyes were bleeding, but I couldn't take my eyes off the sun, not even for a moment, I didn't want to, and I knew it was all me, not Kyuubi making me look.

And the most important memory right then, because it provided a background noise while everything else went on in my head, seemed to be the day I left Konoha. I had gone to Ichiraku Ramen right after I met the Kyuubi that night, I took out my frog wallet and sat down as I talked to the owner. I had been the only one there again, as usual, and he seemed to notice my strange mood then.

"Say Naruto, what's up? You've normally ordered your fifth bowl by now." The owner looked at his number one customer as if he were ill. Naruto looked back to him and gave him a broad smile as he emptied out his Gama-chan, splitting the pile neatly in half and pushing one towards the elderly proprietor.

The old man looked at it curiously and then back to Naruto, requesting an explanation without actually speaking. "Ramen until that's all gone, Ichiraku-oyaji, I'd order more but I don't know how long I'll be able to make the rest last." The old man immediately set to work making the noodles and broth while Ayame went to work on the other ingredients, she was the one who cut into the conversation next.

"Last? Why don't you just take some more missions? You're not quitting on being a ninja are you!" She was at this point leaning over the counter, a cutting knife in one hand accidentally pointed at Naruto. The blonde's eyes widened and he backed a bit even while his eyes were drawn (albeit more covertly than Jiraiya's would've) down her shirt.

With a titanic effort of will, Naruto kept his heart rate down enough so that he didn't fly backwards with a nosebleed while he frantically denied the accusation, his hands waving in the air and occasionally pointing to the knife. Ayame didn't catch the pointing but finally seemed satisfied that he wasn't quitting.

"Well I would hope that you wouldn't quit without giving me notice first, brat." The voluptuous blonde that sat beside Naruto had to hide a smirk at the threatening manner of the knife she'd just seen.

"Hokage-sama!" both the ramen-makers cried out and bowed in unison until she made them stop.

"Oh come on, I'm just ol' lady Tsunade, okay? At least here…" She gave the genin beside her a withering glare that he calculatedly ignored.

"Good, you're here too Baachan, then I don't have to explain this twice." The hokage's eyebrow lifted as Naruto tore into his first bowl of ramen. He drained the broth from the bowl and gave a satisfied rasp as he pushed the bowl off to the side. "I have to leave," he stated simply. Ichiraku set the bowl of ramen in front of his customer as he spoke.

"But you just got here, and you've got a lot more ramen coming!"

Naruto gave the old man a real smile, eyes still open and face not appallingly stretched out. "I didn't mean leave the stand, oyaji, I meant the village. I have to leave the village,"

Tsunade grabbed his collar and pulled him closer, glaring in his face as she hissed quietly "You wanted to _tell_ the hokage in person that you were becoming a missing-nin!"

Naruto tried to back away and held his hands up defensively again "Th-tha-that's not how it is Tsunade-chan!" She blinked at the change in suffix and hesitantly set him back down. Giving him a look that Shino would receive not so many days later in the same spot. "I need to leave because… Kyuubi talked to me, don't interrupt Baachan, it's a weird story."

Another bowl of ramen came, as the blonde began his story, and they continued to come as he continued to tell them all how demons came to be, and what they were, how they came to be what they were now. Tsunade had interrupted him to tell him that the whole concept was preposterous, and he gave her a level look asking her 'so where do _you_ think demons come from?' He'd had another five bowls while she thought it over. Finally she hadn't said anything as an answer, but suggested he continue his story (spoken as: "Get on with this fish story, or I'll kick you through a wall"). He did.

The Ichiraku family listened also, their attention held rapt by the blonde as he described his burden revealing his plan and intentions. The old man faltered a moment when Naruto started laughing, describing the appearance of the boy Kyuubi, and their subsequent argument.

"Kyuubi didn't really order me to go see you and ask you about this, and he never said that I couldn't tell anyone who I thought I could trust," he looked at the two Ichiraku attendants and they gave him their own, honest smiles, "But I hope that you guys won't mention any of this to anyone else… Well except Iruka or Kakashi. Baachan, I know I've got Jiraiya as a sensei now, but he had to leave again so he can't teach me. Kakashi promised he'd do right by me and Sakura from now on, and I believe him, he didn't mean to ditch either of us, he just got distracted. But right now, if I want to get rid of _their_," he inelegantly referenced the Akatsuki,"interest, I need to find strength from myself.

"You and the other sannin grew strong in the war, Yondaime grew strong in the war, there aren't any wars right now so if I want to get as strong as I can from… from him, then I have to have the danger and challenge that you guys all did. And most important… I believe Kyuubi, I don't know why but I do." He looked at the hokage and she gave him a guarded, worried look in response. "I know you worry Baachan, but I have to leave, I just want you to say that I'm doing it with your permission, so I can come back and take your place!" He flashed a broad, bold grin that earned a laugh from the two shopkeepers and a hug and noogie from the strongest ninja in the village.

She left shortly thereafter, leaving Naruto with instructions to meet her in her office before dawn the next day. The blonde happily agreed and had his last bowl of ramen before declaring he couldn't eat any more, bringing a laugh from the proprietors. He stood up on his stool as he shook hands with Ichiraku, the older man pulling him into a grandfatherly hug before letting him go with a 'good luck'. Ayame hugged him after her father and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, whispering after into his ear "If you don't come back I'll dice you up and serve you for Anko's ramen." He grinned at her joke and waved goodbye to both, feeling both warm and sad at the same time as he headed to his apartment. (1)

Closer to the surface of my awareness the memories became less clear-cut, more jumbled, more extreme in the emotions they provoked. Most of the specifics I don't remember but a few stick out. I remember the whole thing mostly, but in jumbled pieces…

I see it now again, Gaara, half-transformed into the sand demon Shukaku, his claw pinning Sakura against the tree, his eyes drilling into mine, his insane laugh just before he spoke

Sasuke's, "You okay, scaredy-cat?" because he had saved me from the demon brothers.

We cut Sakura from the tree, despite Kakashi-sensei saying we'd fail the genin exam if we did and fed her the healing ramen Hinata gave me after my fight with Mizuki-sensei.

My memories were jumbled together into a spinning, twirling mass pushing my emotions to the point where sanity and insanity weren't even questions anymore, they were things for other people to worry about. More and more the memories flowed and I watched and wondered why was I doing this and why had I chosen that? The questions kept flowing, my mind was scattering, unable to handle everything in one stream of thoughts, the emotions still crashed and raged through me all of them burning me out with as much demon-chakra boosted power as they could muster simultaneously. Even as I did that I was questioning all the choices I had made in my life, and I was questioning everything anyone else had ever done that I knew about at the same time, digging through layers and layers of possible motivations and theories.

I was shaking with the agony in my head, I was screaming, bleeding, but my body burned with demonic power and wasn't going to give out, I wanted it to, I needed it to, but it wouldn't. My eyes were rooted to the sun and they couldn't leave it, but I wasn't getting any closer to it, I shivered as I felt my throat rip and heal while I screamed and laughed and cried, frustration consumed my other emotions and then became just another one of them that battled to destroy me.

So I still ran, wondering what was the point of this? My emotions were raging and consuming but the questions became more important, the two tracks of questions became the same and then blended back into the track of emotions, my thoughts came back together again and then answers started appearing to me. Questions and answers built with emotions and disappeared from my mind-track. But the emotions kept up, staying impossibly high, they stopped hurting as they made everything else come faster, the overpowering feelings sang in concert with the other emotions and the answers. And then, I ran out of questions.

By now I saw the small island beneath the sun, the sun was burning bright in the air. It was becoming uncomfortably hot, but my emotions and the answers, which now lacked questions to correspond with, sang and I didn't care about the heat. My eyes drifted down from the sun, but I recalled everything it showed me with instant and blinding clarity, I followed the path of the burning sphere to the ground, to the disc that was diffusing light into that shape.

There was a hole in the ground that threw white, pure light into convex lens. I looked into the light and felt nothing, felt everything, it was life, Uzumaki Naruto's life, and that lens was coloring it into the sun that had dominated the sealscape. The seal was on the other side of the lens and the light, Kyuubi stood up close to the gate again, frantic and frenzied as he raved. I was dazed at that point and followed his shouting and pointing at a rather dull pace, I looked at the seal.

When I saw it first that morning it had decreased less than an eighth from the night before. I was looking at it now and all that remained was the solid pad that had kept the two sets of bars locked together, the paper still read 'Seal', the entire piece of metal was engulfed in a red glow. I looked back down to Kyuubi and decided to hear what he said, though I already knew his words before he spoke them.

"Damnit Naruto, destroy that, it's your humanity, you have to give it up or else we'll die!" My face went serious as I reached out and clasped the lens in my hand. I stared into and watched Tsunade, Iruka, Kakashi… everyone I held dear was in the lens. I looked up and the sun was still above me, even without the lens. "You have to destroy it to let us come back! If you keep it then the shinigami will devour us both!"

I looked at the lens again and started to laugh, it hurt to laugh but I had to. Kyuubi could be funny sometimes. The sun turned blue and dissolved into chakra, it wrapped around the seal and blew away Kyuubi's chakra. "Oniichan… this," I held up the lens for him to see "this is something I can't destroy. Because… " His eyes widened and the seal exploded.

It went dark.

End Chapter Seven: Us Who Are the Thing That Is We

(1): Last likely reference to the elusive chapter four. I know, its cheap.

Author Note: That. Felt. GOOD. To write. Ahh, I love that chapter, I hope you all love it too, I hope it makes up for last chapter's suckiness despite its shortness!REVIEW! VOTE! I'ma go write more.


	7. Chapter 8: Gopher

Author note: Prepare yourselves, for the filler chapter of hell!

Disclaimer: On the rare occasion when I seem able to type coherently, I do not own Naruto.

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Eight: Gopher

"As soon as they left the room again, I ran in, fearing just what I would do now. When I broke through the door I found him standing there in all his glory, by the raw power of his being he had pulled his body's diced parts and pieces back together, and there wasn't a bit of evidence it had ever happened to him. Just being in the room with him would've filled me with awe, but he was so full of power, so unrestrained that just his being hammered on the air with a terrible pressure, if I hadn't already been to the heart of the Maze then I would've died from it I'm sure.

"He looked at me and asked 'who are you? And what am I doing here?' It took me a minute to find the courage to answer. 'You're Owen, you were dead but you seem well enough now-

A certain voice broke in almost hesitantly. "Sasuke, what are you talking about?" The boy in question looked up suddenly from his book to see the pink-haired ninja whom he had been evading for the past few weeks (1).

Sakura, for her part, looked like she was doing well under Tsunade's tutelage. It had only just begun and she already looked a little frayed around the edges, but she also had a genuinely happy and just a bit proud smile. Sasuke must've taken longer in studying her than he thought because she started looking herself over. "What? Is there something wrong?"

Sasuke quickly set aside his book and held his hands up in a gesture of warding. "No, nothing. I was just reading aloud, don't mind me. Anyway, why are you here?" Sakura inwardly blinked at him. Sasuke wasn't normally so… civilized, though he would not apparently ever be mr. manners, he seemed significantly more human now.

She realized by Sasuke's slight eye-tic that she must've been caught up in her reflection of that concept, "Ah! Sorry, uhm, I was here to see how you were doing, and that kind of thing… I mean, now that you can't be a ninja and all…" She trailed off, not wanting to press what she thought was a sore spot.

Quite to her shock, the black-haired orphan gave a dazzling smile, his imitation of Naruto's grin. Sakura shuddered just a little at how good it looked from the pale boy, but pushed it from her thoughts quickly, forcing herself to pay attention to Sasuke's words. "Well actually I could live for the rest of my natural life doing nothing because of all the money my family left me, but frankly I don't feel like being that lazy. Can you imagine what Naruto would say if he got back and I still wasn't doing anything?" He stretched in his chair again, a little lazily. Shocking Sakura once again with just how expressive he'd become. "I don't know, I was thinking I might try my hand at being a cook, what do you think?"

Sakura's surprise could be heard throughout the Uchiha estate, as she collapsed right away on the spot, and left a Sakura-shaped indentation on the floorboards.

Tsunade smiled quite happily as she sat at her desk, sipping green tea because she'd given sake up for the weekdays. Shizune gave an angry, heaving sigh from her own desk, prompting a giggle from Tsunade. The dark-haired woman shot a venomous look at her master and superior, who had ceased her giggling quite swiftly and returned to looking at her paperwork.

One might question why Tsunade was happy to work on her papers and files and things, but that was because she had so damn little of it these days. Upon the several revelations lately, the legendary ninja had found that she could redistribute the workload and no one said anything, it made necessary a new layer of bureaucracy but if all it meant was that a few other people had some work to do, then she was fine with that.

But why then was Shizune grumbling and doing paperwork? Tsunade, apparently, developed a mean streak and had decided to assign Shizune to the genin teams, deciding who went to what missions. This wasn't normally a problem except that the genin were actually in teams, and there were more of them than of any other class. Effectively, Tsunade had given Shizune the lion's share of paperwork, and had spared herself all but the final approval of B, A, and S ranked missions, which now that she knew the ninja of Konoha were on the same page, she could rubber-stamp for three hours before getting out into the streets to study people and do other things that Hokages wanted to do.

The civilians were being a pain in the ass though, and Tsunade had very calmly and cleanly stated that she owned each and every individual's ass in the village of Konoha. She owned them, she explained, because her ninja liked her, and shinobi are remorseless killers. So all was strained and peaceful in the now militarily-dominated village.

The blonde kage stretched luxuriously and set aside the sheaf of signed documents, waving at her assistant as she made her exit. "See you Shizune-chan," she waved lazily over her shoulder. In point of fact, Tsunade knew just what the paperwork was doing to Shizune, it was giving her that same kind of angry impotent feeling that Tsunade had been feeling right up until she established herself, and her ninja as the superior elements of the society. Proudly wearing her hokage robes, Tsunade walked through the village.

She had once hated these robes, because they were silly, but now she loved them because she hated the villagers. Relations between ninja and villagers became tense when it was seen that the military basically took over the village. Mostly, the ninja didn't care, they had their colleagues still and most had their families still, those that didn't had thrown themselves with fanaticism into their work, becoming fantastic shinobi in short order, and coming to realize that their fellow ninja were more family than they could ever hope for. The only family that seemed to have problems with this, was the only family that had ninja and non-ninja in almost equal measure.

Tsunade was thinking this over as she happened to walk past the Hyuuga compound, the two guards at the main entrance favored her with almost grateful smiles, and she smiled back at them. Their looks were for the various occasions when the heated debates had threatened to extend beyond the Hyuuga's compound, an action that would've forced the guards to restrain the white-eyed clan members. Tsunade had, on several of these happenings, been present and had forced the fighting to halt and the ninja and civilian alike to cool their heads.

It was a thing that had pissed off the clan's leaders to no end. It didn't help any that those same leaders thought the Hokage was completely incapable of doing her job for the fact of her femininity, and her unwillingness to follow the Hyuuga orders. Tsunade's impression of the old men was along similar lines, though far more colorful in its particulars.

Lately things had settled down with the Hyuuga for one reason, and one reason only; Hinata.

Hinata had sided with the branch family and several like-minded members of the main house, building an endo-clan power base that swiftly grew to encompass all shinobi of the Hyuuga clan. She wasn't in and of herself a fabulous fighter, but she had a cold, relentless streak in her that was strange and frightening, the unflinching loyalty of several others made it possible for the heiress to bully the civilians of the Hyuuga into line.

If Konoha was a dictatorship, then the Hyuuga had made slaves of their civilians. Most amazing was that the civilians looked at Hiashi and the Hyuuga council as the perpetrators and looked to Hinata, who had been the champion of the branch house as their savior. A view Hiashi had gone out of his way to encourage.

Tsunade thought the whole situation with the Hyuuga was ridiculous and frightening, not something she wanted to deal with, but it was a thing that had to be faced eventually. _Thankfully_, she mused as she walked on past the Hyuuga compound, _today is not the day I have to deal with it._

Shikamaru sat, bored as normal, before a pile of books, looking through all the material he could find. On the other side of the desk was his unexpected companion, Aburame Shino. The bug-user had a similar stack of books, some opened, before himself.

In a rare moment of thinking about the past, the Nara genius recalled one day in his third week of trying to find out what the third's law was. The Aburame had simply shown up, and begun looking through the books he'd yet to get at, asking what he was seeking in the records. When Shikamaru had explained it, Shino had nodded and continued with his reading, making occasional notes on what he read.

Shikamaru had now been at this for over a month and was fed up with it. "This is too troublesome, what kind of capital offense doesn't even get written down?"

Looking up from his book, Shino regarded him curiously, "Shikamaru, you should not be discouraged. Perhaps we are merely going about this the wrong way." The Nara gave him a look with a lazily raised eyebrow. "What, precisely, did the councilman say, prior to his trial and execution?"

With a thoughtful frown, Shikamaru thought back to chapter two and wracked his brain to see what had happened again. "He called Naruto a demon and said that he did not care about Sasuke or the Village." He considered more, sitting up now as he thought. "We know Naruto's human, or at least he's not a demon. He hated Sasuke but so does everyone else who isn't a fangril… or a fanboy. And we know that he loves the village more than most of us… The hokage would only ban something to that degree if there were a grain of truth to it though." He tapped his chin and thought more about it.

Shino picked up where he left off, "We've also known that the village hates him for whatever unknown reason, and he has that strange healing and enduring capacity of his..."

"He made a reference to his battle with Sasuke, saying that he used only his 'other' chakra."

"Naruto, therefore has two systems of chakra, an advanced healing bloodline and an absurd stamina."

"I've read the battle reports, and he occasionally goes into a berserk state where his healing capacity increases exponentially and he exudes raw chakra, but that chakra seems heavily loaded with emotions and erases his rational capacity." They went into a long silence, thinking this over. They reached the same conclusion, but Shino did not speak. "Naruto is the half-demon son of the fourth hokage, who bedded a daughter of the nine-tails, thus prompting its attack and demise?"

Shino blinked a bit, not that Shikamaru could tell, but gave a slight nod. "Perhaps not on the particulars, but clearly he is the offspring of a demon and a human, the two aspects partitioned from one another. The villagers must have seen him as a demon as well, and the Hokage likely instated the law to prevent our generation from hating him."

After that, the two put away their books and agreed they would not speak of this until they had reached a proper conclusion of what to do with their new knowledge. (2)

Sasuke had to half-grumble as he walked on, everywhere he looked, in every restaurant they looked at him with the adoring eyes they always had. Didn't it bother these idiots that he'd betrayed them? Cursed Seal or no, he had been a traitor to this village, something that should by all accounts have been unforgivable.

He wished that he could feel the entitlement he used to about that kind of thing, to believe that he deserved their unending affection, but he had, somehow, developed a new semi-complex. Guilt was the now recurring theme of his life, not purposeless and debilitating like Kakashi's guilt, but the kind that made him want desperately to be better to people. The problem was that most people didn't wish to accept him as merely being a boy who wanted to find a job, they were bound to boast and say in a prideful sort of way 'the Uchiha boy works at _my_ shop'.

Naruto didn't give him this kind of nonsense, Sasuke wondered where his former rival had headed off to.

When Sasuke had been well enough to see visitors, he was practically crying to Sakura, begging her forgiveness for killing their teammate. It had taken considerable time for him to be persuaded and calmed, that Naruto was indeed alive, just having gone on an extended training trip. Thinking about the blonde, as always, brought Sasuke to Ichiraku ramen, he saw it coming closer and thought about the first time he'd found himself here.

"Get the hell out of my shop, you traitor." Sasuke was surprised by the old man's reaction, and looked at him with the same eyes Naruto gave Iruka just after he'd graduated. He quickly nodded, bowed almost head to the ground and dashed away with a gleeful smile and a spring in his step. Sasuke was still new at emotions, and would never be a shining scion of sanity or normalcy, but he didn't care, someone rejected him for who he was, he was human in someone's eyes.

He'd returned again some days later, thinking once more about Naruto, saw where he was and walked in again, fully expecting the same brusque refusal as before. Ichiraku's chef did not disappoint, but before he got going Sasuke sat down. "I've done terrible things, Ichiraku-san, to the village and my friends. Since I never really got to know him on my team, I want to get to know Naruto through you."

The old man had grumbled, given him a long, studying look, called his daughter forward to do the same, and then consulted her. When the two finished their muted talk, the old man grunted and looked at Sasuke. "Order somethin', if you want to understand Naruto, eat like him."

That had been the start of their relationship, and over the weeks that he'd continued coming, Ichiraku had not exactly warmed to Sasuke, but he'd become increasingly tolerant. He slumped heavily into his stool and ordered his chashu ramen. Ichiraku set to work on the noodles and Ayame on the broth and meat, the stand was empty then and therefore silent.

"What's eatin' ya kid?" asked the old man, in a tone suggesting he'd rather not admit he cared.

Sasuke shrugged off the overlay, still touched by the fact that Ichiraku and his daughter thought of him as just another ex-shinobi. "It's nothing, Ichiraku-san. Just having employment troubles." He gave the two one of Naruto's face-spanning smiles to show them that it wasn't a problem, not knowing that they knew Naruto used it as a way to show he didn't want them to worry about him while his problems only got worse.

He also didn't know that they were experienced enough with that grin, to see he used it like a mask too. And he wouldn't get to know either. For all their ability to perceive it, the two also knew that just coming out and saying not to do it was totally useless, instead they would merely adjust the method of their attack.

"Well what's the problem? I figure most places would be plenty happy to hire you at a generous salary," the old man slipped the noodles into the broth and added the various toppings, handing the bowl to the Uchiha.

Sasuke picked up his chopsticks and split them neatly, murmuring an 'itadakimasu' as he did, taking a long, healthy slurp before he answered. "That's just the problem, no one's hiring because I'm qualified. Most places I'm really not. I don't want a job just 'cuz I'm 'the last Uchiha, beset by devils and terrors and things that go bump in the night. A man to be pitied and appeased at all costs!'" his mockery of people's adoration had been one of his few endearing qualities at their second meeting.

The meal went on in silence for another ten minutes, before Sasuke finished and set his bowl aside and tossed the used chopsticks away. He stood up and looked resigned to hunting down a place that wouldn't give him a chance before a voice stopped him.

"Hey kid, take this list and come back first thing in the morning with the stuff on it. Oh and welcome to Ichiraku Ramen's procurement division," the old man placed a slip of paper into the raven-haired civilian's palm and Sasuke gave the weathered chef a bizarre look.

The chef was apparently finished with him though and Sasuke was too happy to care. Sure maybe he wasn't a chef, but this was a nice enough job for him all the same!

It wasn't until it was dark, much later that night, that he noticed the list had absolutely no references of where to go for the supplies, and that he'd been given no cash with which to buy. Given his desperation for work, and his present state, he reacted how anyone in his position would.

"Oh you have _got_ to be shitting me."

End Chapter Eight: Gopher

(1): Ah yes, about that… Time in Konoha moves faster because I hate these people and don't feel like dallying about with people who aren't the main characters. Or love interests.

(2): No, Uzumaki Naruto is _not_ a half-demon. However like many authors seem to enjoy, these two have come to what seems to be a logical conclusion without having been given the complete information. Either that or Shikamaru has been smoking certain dubiously medicinal products.

Author Note: A filler chapter? Yes. Late? Yes. Apologies? Profuse. Blood loss? Imminent, knowing my luck.

Author Note2: Finally able to post this steaming tripe. My many many many apologies, this was supposed to go out on the nineteenth, but my beta is unable to beta, and when I tried to upload, ffnet was having none of it. Expect nine by the thirtieth.


	8. Chapter 9 Uzumaki Unmei

Author Note: A return to the story, at long last…

Disclaimer: In an infinite number of possible dimensions I do own Naruto. However, for each one where I do there are another infinite number of dimensions where in which I don't. That makes sense, and the reality I perceive fits the statistical assumption of that truth. The beta laughs

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Nine: Uzumaki Unmei

"Damnit Naruto! Destroy that, it's your humanity and it's keeping us from merging! That'll be the death of us!"

"Oniichan… this," the lens lifted up, glowing with superficial warmth, "this is something I can't destroy." The seal shook and shuddered, disintegrating before their eyes. "Because it was never real to begin with," the seal exploded in a shower of inky blackness, then receded all at once back into the seal.

In a flare of abject darkness and a stink of sulfur, the pale lavender face of the shinigami appeared, its sharp-fanged mouth stretched wide and engulfed the bars of the seal. The pearly face lifted away again, the sky over the two darkened, the sealscape fell asleep, and the inhabitants went unconscious, the strain of what was happening overloading their personalities and subsuming their thoughts.

If anyone else had seen it they would find the orange-clad ninja burning with chakra, bright red, electric blue, and a frightening, eerie purple. The ninja's hands were clasped together, fingers interlaced in the snake seal. The chakra ceased and he shouted out loud, "UZUMAKI NARUTO, TOUBUN!" flinging his hands away simultaneously.

Suicide, salvation, insanity, stability, this was the only technique that saved Uzumaki Naruto, it was the only one that could, otherwise he would be consumed from the inside out by the fires of his failure to mesh. His tan, malnourished body shifted and writhed, glimmering and slowly becoming translucent. His body turned to glass for the barest moment, containing a roiling smoke of purple energy, then the glass shattered and the chakra rose as a pillar of raw potency.

The pillar slowly defined itself, becoming two distinct trails of light, one blue, one red. As the distance between them increased, both pillars collapsed down, the energy falling down and collapsing and focusing, bringing two complete, functional bodies into being. Satisfied, the two life-essences of Uzumaki Naruto invested themselves into their new bodies, and slept peacefully.

When finally Uzumaki Naruto woke, his two bodies stood and stretched out, ensuring that the vessels functioned properly. The two did not regard each other, for they were as completely aware of the other as they were of themselves. Moving forward a little ways, they left behind all that remained of the initial Uzumaki Naruto, the scorched orange jumpsuit left to smolder and scatter on the wind. Both bodies wore Tsunade's necklace, the real one, because Uzumaki Naruto wore it. (proto-note)

They spoke slowly, using the same voice at the same time, their voices perfectly working in concert, they were unsurprised by this. "Where do we go now we wonder… We should not return to Wave until we figure a bit more of our self out. Right, we are quite hesitant to bring more confusion now." (1, 2, and 3)

The pair sat, quietly contemplating all that they knew and likely prospects for travel destinations. After some time the two announced aloud, "Aha! We know where to go!"

Kyuubi leaned forward, looking like the old Uzumaki Naruto with fiery orange hair, baleful red eyes with slit pupils, and nine weaving tails that faded from view as he sat. He spoke with his own rough voice "**We have decided**_…_" (2)

Naruto stood, simultaneously with his counterpart, this soul's body no longer mimicked its complete self. Gone was the kill-me orange jumpsuit, in its place were neon, kill-me orange plates of interlocking metal, so seamlessly fit that it was debatable if he were separate from them. The soul that was Naruto had a voice thick with emotion, for the moment, wonderment "_That we shall go…_" (3).

"In that direction!" they pointed at a random, unguided point in a direction that was neither Wave nor Konoha, and began their proud march.

Human minds handle time strangely, always using reference points and distances thusly from them. Typically the measurement for distances between significant events are cycles between less important events. And the human mind is an object so complex that attempting to write a separation of egos while maintaining the complete self, would be next to impossible for anyone who wasn't devoted entirely and completely to the concept. (Read: The author doesn't know enough to describe the stuff they think while moving, so we cut to the good parts)

The ninja continent, that nameless landmass, was quite a large place, something most failed to appreciate when glancing at a map. True that ninja speeds, horses, and other similar animals made the trips faster, but the fact was that it would take considerable lengths of time to get from one side to another, or really even between two hidden villages.

There was of course an exception for beings composed of chakra who merely manipulated or temporarily possessed bodies manufactured by the force of their awful will. The two beings fitting this description theorized that they could very easily discorporate themselves and re-conjure their essences and bodies in another place with little enough effort. At the same time, they had no urge to do it, they needed to spend more time in their current state, to continue figuring out what they were and how to act.

Unlike Naruto's rapid fragmentation and purifying experience, the process of refining the two identities into separated cohesion would take a long time. There might be an occasional breakthrough, but this would be a years-long process, which was fine for Uzumaki Naruto, Naruto, and Kyuubi, who all had had quite enough of Konoha for the time being. (4)

It occurred to them, that they had left their money in Uzumaki Naruto's wallet with the rest of his clothes. Well, the pair didn't mind. After all, they wouldn't get hungry, they needed no shelter, and their chakra was providing their trappings. Being an artificial construct had certain advantages, they decided quite firmly. (4b)

The two stopped at the edge of a massive crater, looking into the cavernous pit below curiously. "What do we figure it was?" they looked at each other, curious.

"**A machine of war from another world meant to annihilate all life!**"

"_More like ninja-overkill on a former village._"

"Actually it was just a meteor, it hit long ago, but it was a meteor all the same." A third voice picked up from somewhere nearby. The two bodies snapped their heads around to glare at the last speaker. The boy wore what strikingly resembled ninja garb, a hitai-ate bearing a star, and a facemask in one of his gloved hands.

The two fixed the newcomer with an ominous, piercing gaze. It was almost the same look that most ninja gave people who snuck up on them, a mixture of wrath, indignation and surprise. However where most ninja also had a bit of fear in their gaze, the pair held challenging looks instead. Such a look wouldn't normally have intimidated the hoshigakure genin, but receiving it from two faces, two faces which provided the distinctly odd feeling that a higher being was studying from afar. The feeling vanished when the two gave cheerful grins and inclined their heads to the side, speaking simultaneously once more.

"Hi, where the devil are we?" The simple question got the ninja to blink in frank surprise. Certainly any traveler worth their salt would know at least a thing or two about the reportedly dangerous hidden star village. Voicing his confusion brought blank, incomprehensible stares and joined questions, "Didn't we just say we were lost?"

"_Look, all we want is to know where we_," "**are. And right now you're being just a tiny bit irksome**." They gave the ninja a harsh glare loaded with a variety of emotions. Once again the ninja was struck by the strange feeling of being observed by something far too otherworldly to understand.

He spoke quickly in his own defense, the not-mundane sensation overwhelming like vertigo. "Err, right, sorry. I'm Sumaru, this is a part of Hoshigakure. If this were just the border I'd ask you to turn back, but this is deep in our territory, would you mind coming to see our leader, I'm sure he'll have many questions for you, like how you got here through our patrols."

The pair considered the option for a long moment, rubbing their chins thoughtfully. "_It might be far more entertaining to level the village._"

"**But we wouldn't actually do that. At least, we think we wouldn't.**" The two nodded as if having reached a decision, and made to follow the genin, who was only too happy to stop having to watch the other bizarre ninja. Unwilling to display any of their tricks, the three simply walked to the village proper at the heart of hidden star's holdings.

It was a hair past noon when Tsunami woke from her peaceful slumber, the oppressive light shining down through her window. The banshee-cry of an alarm clock going off at its proscribed hour and the subsequent chakra-laden crunch sound. The gentle breeze of an air-conditioning fan chilling the healthy woman while her sheets clung to the sweat-slicked frame…

Perhaps peaceful was the wrong word to use. Tsunami's slumber was neither innocent nor peaceful, filled as it was with dreams and temptations like she wasn't used to. She gave a gentle groan as she peeled her body out of the smooth orange silks and made for her bathroom, blushing a darker shade than her normal tan as her mind replayed bits of her dreams. By the time she had the water turned on, she had decided to turn it back towards the cold.

Damn Naruto, showing up and giving her all those thoughts and wicked doings in her dreams. And then there were his words to add to her worries. Sure, after some time her body and the bodies of the majority of her student's had been under a most horrible strain, to the point where it was widely accepted that the Wave ninja were about to die out en masse, but that had been only two weeks into the program.  
As she thought back to it she stepped into the cold water and let it rinse the sleep and dreams from her.

"Tsunami-sama, you have to stop this! They're all going to die, I can't let you kill my baby!" Third time. Tsunami's haggard face contorted and froze into a terrifying visage of challenge. By now she was the military leader of Wave, while not the same sort of tyranny as Konoha was, that didn't prevent Tsunami from breaking social taboos and making unpopular decisions.

Like this one, she reflected. "It is every child's choice to continue or to end their training, so long as they mean to continue they do it by my methods. I have faith in them, I think that they'll overcome this, and when they do they will show the whole world… You'll see. Wave will wear down every opposition it faces." There was a quality to her voice that was stressed and tired, but devoted with the desperation of the damned who knew it.

Over the course of the next few days the academy had begun to fare better, their training began to accelerate, along with their rest and hunger. They were consuming more but the training was paying off at amazing speeds, and if people tended to be a little more emotional than they had in the past then that was fine wasn't it?

And so, Tsunami resolutely put Uzumaki's words out of her mind, that thought however made her wonder why the house was so quiet. That isn't to say it was ever rowdy, not since Inari's adoptive father-figure passed on.

In point of fact, Tsunami had hated the man, while he was kind and genial in public, he had been brutish, too careless in private. Not to mention how condescending and sexist he'd been to her. Not at all like the object of her current affections.

It wouldn't be too much of an overstatement to say that the concept of Uzumaki Naruto had become the massed crush of Wave. Few actually knew him though, and almost none knew him well enough to realize that his concept was far less appealing than the real thing. Even Tsunami didn't know him well enough to understand him completely, just enough to know that she wanted to know more. Perhaps she'd get the chance today since he was staying here, which brought her back to the question 'why is it so quiet?'.

She shrugged aside the thought and finished her shower, toweled off, and got herself dressed for the day. Deciding she was presentable for her heart's desire, she went on downstairs and found the note her guest had left for her, and gave a depressed sigh that her jinchuuriki idol was no longer close at hand. She set the note aside to read after she made some food, the process of which was done in an upset funk.

She sat back at the table with her breakfast and ate distractedly while she read the note.

'Sorry Tsunami-chan, didn't mean to leave without telling you, but it's actually better off like this. Kyuubi says if we don't get out of populated areas then bad things are likely to happen to other people, and I certainly don't want that. Your students will do fine, I'm sorry for doubting you.

If you still need someone to teach you jutsus, then send someone to Konoha and have them meet with the current hokage. Send this note too, (Tsunade-baachan if you're reading this then get outta my personal letters! But if you help out Wave's ninja I'll actually stop complaining about missions for two months, promise). I wish I could help you more, or just stay there, who knows, maybe if Konoha refuses me then I'll come and be a Wave shinobi. Wouldn't that be awesome?

Its getting close to dawn now, and I'm starting to lose it a little bit more' his handwriting became a crass scrawl '**We must be moving now, to the lovely Tsunami-chan we bid a farewell… Uzumaki Naruto will return to you, have no doubts**.' Once more it became his refined chicken scratch. 'Yeah so anyways, I'll see ya again Tsunami-chan!'

He signed with his own name and a spectacular flourish and a chibi-fied version of his statue, which Tsunami had to smile at. She finished her meal and headed out the door, blurring as she ran through possible groups to go to Konoha with her. Oh yes, she would go, just to see what people thought of her Naruto.

After all, his determination should be a sign of his village, shouldn't it?

The students of Wave ninja academy and their teachers turned suddenly to look in the direction that a massive surge of chakra. It was impossibly far away, but they all still sensed it, and then they saw the pillar of purple chakra. They watched it split and dance away into columns of red and blue life and each felt as if they were present wherever it was this was happening.

Then it faded away, each of them felt it, knew that they alone had been privy to something special and felt as though they had been born anew, their old lives scorched away by the fires of an unknown savior. They wouldn't know the damnation they were inviting for years, but eventually, it would be all too painfully clear.

The development of Wave's ninja began to rocket forward again. (5)

Naruto stood before the Hoshigakure leader, Kyuubi at his side, the two wore matching bored expressions while the older man ranted about treaties this and espionage that. The two had been standing, listening to the tirade for some time now, and while they had initially made a game of it by counting the times his forehead veins throbbed in proportion to his neck veins, it had gotten old fast.

So as the man was just about to begin speaking about something _else_ Kyuubi and Naruto stepped forward and grabbed the man by his collar, and lifted him up into the air. Kyuubi's nine tails became evident, Naruto's irises bled out the frozen blue into the whites of his eyes 'til all was the luminescent shade first seen by Manbun Sonmin. The otherness, the raw force of personality and the dual source of limitless power hammered in the cramped space of the man's office, flooding it with too much life.

"Hey, old man, shut the hell up for a minute!" then they dropped him, and became normal again, taking their seats and waiting for him to recover.

"**Geez, these humans really like to get the wrong idea don't they?**"

Naruto shrugged noncommittally and beamed happily. "_Yeah but they shut up fast so it doesn't bother us too much, right?_"

"**Only when we're unlike how we were. Used to be he wasn't scary at all.**"

"But that's done with now. We are, and therefore Uzumaki Naruto is going to be terribly frightening to most life in general." They nodded resolutely and Akahoshi sat dumbly, their captive audience. "Now the reason why we ended up here with no one noticing us was the fact that we are not human, and have no trace of human chakra left in us. Therefore we appear to senses you have no need of mostly." Naruto held up a fist and it slowly burned away into blue chakra-fog that shimmered in the air.

"_These bodies are also false, meaning there is no reason for us to be noticed._"

"**Being the fearsome weapons**" "_that we are, if we had decided_" "to obliterate your village we would not waste our time scouting. We would simply render you to ash." "_That being said, mind if we wander around your village for a while before we head out again?_"

The two stalked away from the gates of Hoshigakure no Sato grumbling. "Just because we said that we could crush the whole village he kicks us out! So not fair!" The two turned back and thumbed their noses at the village.

End Chapter Nine: Uzumaki Unmei

Not The Author Note: "Look kit, I'm sorry," this statement. I see it so often it makes me SICK! Just felt like saying so. If I ever have Kyuubi apologize for making the villagers hate Naruto, then somebody carve me up into teriyaki slices for the homeless (unless I provide a damnably good reason).

Author Note: Uhm… yeah, I guess not a whole lot happened in this chapter did it? I got a whole buncha ideas though when I went back and reread my reviews, it will be Naruto Tsunami pairing because the idea has begun to appeal to me, but if you expect romance in this story, you're sadly mistaken. Again I wanted this chapter to demonstrate Naruto/Kyuubi/Uzumaki Naruto and the soon to be declared Ishougakure no Sato.

(Proto-note): Naruto and Kyuubi both have the real necklace Tsunade gave Uzumaki Naruto. Neither is a copy. That makes no sense? Then let me put it like this. These are beings essentially ascending from our plane of understanding, get over it, this stuff happens.

(1): Normal type for spoken word is normal people, or Naruto and Kyuubi speaking at once.

(2): Bold face means that just Kyuubi is speaking.

(3): Italicized speaking is Naruto talking.

(4): Shwaa? -My beta came back and got a little confused here. Naruto- the original human soul of Uzumaki Naruto and the dominant personality. Kyuubi- the soul and essence of the Kyuubi no Kitsune that lost its demonhood, Uzumaki Naruto's less apparent but equally important personality. Uzumaki Naruto- The former human with two souls, two personalities, whose every action is the result of the conflict between his two complete selves. Also the body. Mostly this is a label, because he is neither a soul nor a personality, merely the of the other two.

(4b): Wait I think I understand now,... Errr, my head hurts. - My beta is funny when I become deliberately confusing.

(5): I refuse to have to have the main character romance with any individual not his equal in martial skill, and Wave's ninja will get truly entertaining as this tale goes on.


	9. Chapter 10: The Hard, Necessary Choices

Author's Note: I initially had a snobby little note up here, but I changed it. Now it's snooty instead. I realize I haven't driven the point home enough, so I'll say it again. I need reviews. Reviews are like the neon-lifeblood of my mountain dew. My blood glows you know. Anyway, I am unmotivated without reviews, words motivate me to do what I'm doing, if I'm writing this when I get words, I will write more.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. I don't own Katamari Damacy, I own naught… Except flopples.

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Ten: The Hard, Necessary Choices

"Damn bastards didn't need to kick us out! We didn't do anything to them!" The duo ranted against the leaders of Hoshigakure no Sato. They had left the aforementioned village behind, and had no idea how long ago it was, realizing that they no longer perceived time might have frightened them once, but Naruto and Kyuubi had long since gotten over limitations like time and space.

This being said, the pair were also far busier kvetching about their recent disputes with conventional law figures. Naruto gave an overdramatic sigh and looked to his duplicate walking beside him "_So where are we going now?_"

Kyuubi shrugged his shoulders noncommittally. "**Like we'd know. We pooled our intellects together if we recall properly.**" The orange-haired Uzumaki glowered.

"_Yeah we guess. _But still! We mean, isn't this just a little ridiculous? We are wandering around in a dark and very expensive forest, being pursued by an ominous thundering sound!" This prompted the two to suddenly pause and look behind them, the direction from whence the ominous rolling sound came. Kyuubi and Naruto began to inch away from their former position, having a distinct and uncomfortable feeling that whatever it was would suck major ass to be hit by.

When a massive rolling glob of shrubs, animals, assorted miscellaneous items, and the occasional very dead-looking human passed them by the two stared fixedly at it, not noticing the human running behind it frantically rolling it with his chakra. The two paused, looked at each other, and then followed the ball with their eyes. They looked at each other again and continued walking, resolutely throwing the giant ball out of their minds.

Unfortunately, fate tends to hate living avatars of pseudo-ascendant beings and their fractured psyches, and soon the rolling… thing… was forced back into their minds, this time propelled with a force that verged on the same level of disturbing as the shouts of 'Gai-sensei' and 'Lee'. In fact a similar seen is what forced it upon them.

Much to the shock of the wandering souls, they soon came upon another village, another village that happened to be a quiet and private ninja village. "Holy shit, just how many hidden villages _are there in the world?_ **Kakashi did tell us that there were many scattered throughout the continent… **Not that the explanation condones finding another so close, by any stretch." They concluded. Of course, since time was irrelevant to the two, they had no idea where or how far they were, they weren't better yet so this distraction was obviously too close to the other villages.

With a resigned, perfectly stereo sigh the pair marched towards the gates, gates constructed to look like white-gloved hands lacking thumbs. Having to pause at the obstacle brought out the more traumatic event for the duo, this being the man who leapt out of nowhere to stand before them.

Every civilization has a few things in common; every spacefaring civilization has something like sweedish meatballs, every civilization has laws and regulations, and on some level every civilization has haves and have-nots. In the ninja world, there was an additional stipulation- that any hidden village of humans was required by the nature of their work to have an individual like Maito Gai.

This law was demonstrated violently to the two heroes as the pink-suited man with a neon-tie-dye jounin vest and an afro came into sight. His yellow and green-striped hitai-ate bore the symbol of a carpet roll studded with stars. The man flashed a brilliant, almost blinding smile and gave a thumbs-up to them.

"WEARY TRAVELERS! Wander no longer for the winds of fortune have brought you to the famed Village Hidden in the Cosmos. Fate has surely smiled upon such lively beacons of fortune on this day!"

There was a long moment of silence before the armor-clad blonde looked at his companion. "Us, w_hy is Maito Gai saying we're at Uchuugakure no Sato?_ **Shut up, us, we're trying to figure out why **fate seems to hate our sanity so much." As they continued attempting to figure matters out, another gaudy figure appeared.

A foot shorter than the jounin, the obvious genin was also clad in a bright pink casual suit, he also had the yellow and green-striped hitai-ate of his sensei. "Kouro-sensei! You suddenly abandoned our training, has fortune blessed us with these visitors!"

"Fuuten! Who said that you should abandon your training! Run two dozen laps around Uchuugakure then tell your teammates they may go home!" The two were appalled by the response, and horrified and its continuation.

"HAI! Kouro-sensei! I will continue training with the winds of fortune at my back! Perseverance and fate shall see me through!" And with that, the proto-afro ran away at a brisk pace.

Meanwhile the pair were twitching in barely suppressed anguish. "What deity hates us so fervently? _Why must we be forced to withstand this _**… this wretched human? **_Have we not_** suffered enough of **his mindless drivel!"

The jounin opposite them, Kouro as his student had identified him, stared in absolute incomprehension. "How… rude?" He wouldn't have been so unsure of himself if the two weren't so utterly bizarre, speaking for one another and together like that. He shook off the oddness of the pair and continued. "So long as you have no ill-will towards our village then I shall allow you inside!"

The pair by now would agree to anything to get away from this character, and so gave rapid nods of agreement that they meant no harm, and soon after were bolting down the streets away from the jounin Kouro with all the chakra-boosted speed their bodies could muster.

Some hours later found the two standing atop a roof, strips of fabric covering their eyes to protect them from the harsh evening light. Uchuugakure, they had discovered, was completely insane. The entire city was covered in more gaudy neon displays than Uzumaki Naruto had ever even imagined possible. Lights and colors and ridiculously shaped structures all worked up to a solid and painful pair of migraines.

Not all was bad, it should be noted. As the two had discovered all of this sever trauma had had a positively divisive effect on their condition. With severe effort and thought, Kyuubi had managed to refer to Naruto as 'you' once. The two were discussing the implications at that particular moment.

"_So, the more traumatic an event, the more damage our psyche takes, the more damaged we become, the more split we become._" The armored blonde attempted to sort the matter out in their mind.

The red-haired boy sitting next to him gave a slow nod. "**And when we regain our separate minds, we can be Uzumaki Naruto once more.**"

"So the question then becomes, what can we do that would be so traumatic, so devastating to us, that we would have to develop split selves to cope with it?" The asked no one in particular. Before the pair could come to a proper conclusion about the next and most healing course of action, they were interrupted by a certain proto-afro ninja in a pink suit.

Fuuten, they recalled absently, was the subordinate of Kouro. The boy spoke quickly, with the same bizarre fervor they had witnessed in Rock Lee. "You two are ninja from some other village aren't you? If so, please allow me the honor of a spar so that I may see how my training has furthered my skill."

The pair stared for a moment at one another. And grinned as their idea formed. "Sure thing, Fuuten-san." The student blinked at the odd speech, but shrugged it off much faster than Kouro had. "**We'll spar you, but if we win, you have to tell us about that rolling ball of crap we've seen around the village.**"

"Against both of you at once? Very well then I sh-"

"_We didn't mean both of us at once, we just meant us._" Naruto pointed an orange armored finger at Kyuubi.

He blinked in confusion for a moment, but then bellowed his agreement. "And if I win you must tell me how you became so strong!"

Now this confused the two. Somehow this boy sensed their strength, but labeled it as being strength that was different from his own and the strength of others. More to the point, why question their method to power if they proved the inferior? Well, humans were silly like that sometimes, they decided.

"**Agreed, but knowing how we got this powerful will do you no good… I suppose that's for you to learn **_though, isn't it? Perhaps we should move to somewhere less _likely to be decimated in the process of our spar?" It was a question asked without pride or ego, simple acknowledgement, after all, the two had gone beyond the limitations of the merely human. (1)

He hesitated for a moment, but the genin (perhaps two years older than Uzumaki Naruto was, they noted) nodded swiftly and led his new friends on a bizarre series of jumps and flips, the lingering flares he left behind whenever he leapt clued the pair into his use of chakra. So the boy wasn't totally Rock Lee, but he had that whole 'alternative ninja' vibe still, a creepy thought for the pair.

Finally they came to a halt in what for all the world seemed like an oversized boxing ring. Kyuubi tapped his foot against the spongy ground and glanced at his opponent again. "You know, this isn't precisely what we meant by a more durable arena…"

The boy opposite the being gave a dazzling smile and struck a 'good guy' pose, prompting the two non-humans to deadpan. "This ring is made from a special material that acts as both a sponge and mirror of chakra, preventing it from being damaged or rolled up! Your concern for the village clearly shows how blessed by fate we are, but for the moment, let us simply fight! My name is Fuuten, may I know yours before we begin?"

"Fuuten eh? No clan name? Fine. We're-" the two began speaking together "**Kyuubi**" the red-head spoke with grim satisfaction "_Naruto_" and the armored blonde spoke simultaneously. And as they both introduced themselves, a powerful, otherworldly presence dominated the arena and wheezed what sounded ominously like Uzumaki Naruto. But the voice might just have been hearing things, and the presence fell away again quickly.

"**Now if we're done with that**_ may we begin this_ little spar?" Fuuten just barely had time to nod before Kyuubi began to plod inexorably forwards, body smoldering as chakra overloaded the fake body, crimson energy wrapping around the ninja.

While Fuuten seemed put-off by his foes display, he recovered quickly and dashed forward a flurry of shuriken preceding him, he was certain they'd be dodged and was prepared to divert his course to attack the ninja at his new position, but Kyuubi stood and let the iron pierce his glowing cloud of chakra, his orange jumpsuit, and his vessel's flesh.

The fine spray of blood joined the glowing crimson. However if Kyuubi felt any pain from his construct, he gave no indication of it, he simply continued forward straight into the charging fist from the Uchuu genin. The fist impacted flesh, caused the skin and muscle and bone to cave inwards in a manner not unlike a cartoon, and then the tension over the whole body to release and burst forth in a searing cloud of red chakra.

The boy was thrown back by the release of energy, he rolled along with it, and was immediately shocked by what he saw when he looked up again. There was no longer any body where Kyuubi had stood, just a sizzling red cloud and the distinct presence of something far more than oneself. Fuuten paused, for once unsure of himself, before he shook the notion and slapped his hands together to attempt to dispel the sight.

However, the lad's dispelling technique rendered no genjutsu inert, the fog was still there, and… laughing? He tried again, and a third time with the same effects, finally the cloud began to compose itself into a reasonable shape. Well, as reasonable as horse-sized foxes with nine-tails being composed of blood-red flames could be.

Fuuten was stunned into immobility by the display, and Kyuubi took advantage of that fact by lashing one of his tails swiftly 'round the boy's throat and lifting him into the air while the remaining eight chords of fluffy chakra battered and beat the boy ruthlessly. When he was broken and bloody enough for Naruto to wince, Kyuubi dropped him, both chuckling darkly.

"**Well I believe we've quite solidly developed a way to part ourselves a little more.** But we're still too well-integrated, oh damn it all, he's still moving isn't he?" Indeed Kyuubi's opponent was beginning to lift himself up from the ground, hacking up blood and bile from the abuse.

The pair regarded his poor state and decided to take him to a hospital, Naruto stepping forward to pick him up while Kyuubi made a fake vessel again, Fuuten being given a reluctant firsthand view of a human's inner and outer workings while the body was created from airborne particulate matter. If he hadn't been half-dazed and only partway conscious, he'd have lost his lunch then and there. Mercifully for Naruto, he didn't.

Kyuubi wrapped its body once more in the fake-leather orange and nodded to his co-soul, the pair proceeding towards the source of antiseptic smells.

Upon arriving the pair expected to be assaulted with a bevy of questions and perhaps an ANBU escort to an interrogation cell. However, the receptionist saw who it was they carried, gave a rueful smile and shook her head before speaking into an intercom.

"Fuuten was injured training again, will someone please prepare his normal room?" then she looked back to the pair of strange villagers (she presumed) "Thanks for bringing him here, he always pushes too hard in training sessions, thanks to that idiot teacher, Maito Kouro. I swear those two…"

The pair quickly regarded each other and gave a subtle shudder. They quickly turned their minds from the disturbing implication that Gai had a _family_ like himself. "Errr… _Why exactly _**do they train like that? **They seem to be completely _competent ninja. No real_** reason that we could see to be so…** fanatical." They concluded together.

The receptionist gave them a curious look, though they couldn't really understand why, but answered them, slowly at first. "Well… Ah, most Uchuu nin have a Katamari, Maito Kouro and Fuuten don't have contracts with any of the royal cousins or the prince himself, so they have no Katamari of their own." At their blank stares she elaborated, a heavy sigh escaping her first while an orderly hefted Fuuten's unconscious body and carried him away. "You're not from around here are you? Put simply the prince and the royal cousins are, more or less, the physical manifestations of several kami. This village is under their protection, and they have granted us access to their mightiest tool, the katamari, it rolls over objects, and said objects stick to it, as it increases in size from the accumulated objects, it can pick up larger things, including people. Fairly… lethal."

The pair of unearthly creatures stared aghast at the woman, struck by the absurdity that deities would grant humans such a potent weapon. Or such an absurd one. "We must meet this _prince of yours._ **He sounds**_ most_ interesting."

Without any other words the pair exited the hospital, they knew what they needed to know now, and they had to verify another supposition. There were dreadful possibilities if their theories proved accurate in this case as well. The two decided very firmly that if there was any sense of justice guiding the world, then they would be completely wrong tonight.

Sadly, justice does not govern the world. As Tsunade knew full well, sheer bitchiness determined power more anything else in the world. Reality, again as the busty kage already knew, could be a serious bitch.

Or rather in the particular case the two souls were faced with, unreality could be several-fold the bitch the old woman could. They had first attempted to dispel the illusion, but it lingered on, seven attempts later and the sight was still before them. They debated the possibility that it was all a lie, a costume maybe, but the strange feeling cast off from the alleged 'kami' reminded the pair too much of Uzumaki Naruto in that brief moment before they Became.

The creature before them was a giant, at least nine feet tall, upper body clad in a forest green shirt, a fluffy sky blue vest over that, maroon tights covered the legs what rested on the world's flashiest recliner. Scariest was the head.

The head was a bloody carpet roll, with a face stuck in the center, confusing, nauseating patterns and flashing lights studded throughout the carpet roll head. There were twenty other creatures much like the first one scattered throughout the room. Possessed of various shapes, sizes and levels of detail, the seated giant was by far the grandest. The pair presumed this was the prince.

"So… you lot crossed here on your _own. From the realm of the abstract and immaterial_** and have remained here for some time. **Tch, posing as kami, _that's a little low _**isn't it?**" Kyuubi and Naruto glared coolly at the 'Prince'.

The Prince promptly responded, with a slightly amused look on his ghastly pale face beneath the pompadour, but the response itself was unintelligible. It sounded like fingernails against a sleeping bag, if the two had known what record players were they'd have said it sounded like someone scratching a record.

Whatever it sounded like, it was no language that either understood, so they merely settled for a blank, confused look. Exchanging glances quickly before turning back to face the extra-planar entity. The being made another series of wheezy, scratchy sounds and pinched what looked like a star until I exploded.

The smoke of said explosion quite neatly obscured their sight of the nin who had been summoned. When the smoke drifted away, the scratching sounds continued, and the nondescript nin (a chuunin if his tie-dye vest was any indication) paid close attention to the Prince and then looked to the visitors.

"Ah, the visitors. What's more visitors not quite real, not decided how they exist yet. You know our father used to be that way, we rather miss him sometimes." The nin looked to the prince with a confused expression, but the record scratch went on. "But that's not important right now, what matters now is the roll-up. Yes. The katamari brings light and goodness to the people of Uchuu. As long as the people of Uchuu aren't hurt by our deception, why would we tell them the truth?"

"**Valid point**_ but why proclaim yourself _kami?" queried the pair.

The nin looked even more confused now, looking back and forth between the debating parties. A few of the royal cousins started twitching in jerky, spasmodic gestures, getting Kyuubi and Naruto just a little nervous. "We never proclaimed ourselves kami. The villagers thought that so we just smiled and nodded, they have become our loyal fans now. We would die to defend our fans, and our fans would die for us, its all very touching yes? So long as we all are important like this, then why correct their misconception? Seems like it does less good in the end. Anyway, that is not why you are here Uzumaki Naruto."

The pair gave him a hard, questioning look, they hadn't introduced their conjoined self here. "How did-"

"All things not real know what Uzumaki Naruto is becoming. You two are breaking laws and rules by simply existing, we rather like the thought that you will remake the world, so we won't even try to stop you. Humans couldn't stop you of course, we are pretty sure everyone wants you two succeed, you're popular like that, yes? Well… Uzumaki Naruto won't want you to succeed. But you knew that already, we're getting redundant now… Oh well. Go on Kyuubi and Naruto, the more time you waste here the more convoluted the rules become. Roll away, find yourselves, and let the Uzumaki creature be happy." He opened his mouth and dazzling, painful rainbow light filled the room, it sizzled on the skins of the artificial bodies and then it was gone, and they weren't in the village anymore. Actually, they'd have fallen to the ground, if their physical bodies hadn't been destroyed by the royal rainbow. Instead they clung to the tree, existing as translucent, shifting clouds of chakra.

They sat there, not bothering with words as they mulled over what happened. They needed something that would cause so much trauma, they would be forced to break apart. The Prince had told them that Uzumaki Naruto wouldn't want it to happen, that gave them a hint, perhaps guilt was the key. But what could prompt guilt to the degree it would give a person a dissociative disorder? That would take something- oh. Oh oh oh.

A pair of jaws manifested in the red chakra, because Kyuubi was very happy.

End Chapter Ten: The Hard, Necessary Choices

Author Note: Jeez it took me a month to write this… And it's not that good. Damn. Oh well, is what is, yes-yes? Anyway, Uchuugakure is a village I always wanted to have, maybe it'll get its own fanfic some other day, who knows? I had too many thoughts and not enough dedicated theme to this chapter, but that's what happen when I have few reviews.

That brings me to another point, I need to get a total offorty-six Reviews? (Reviews, right. Quiet Aidis) or the next two chapters won't be written. I don't wanna be an attention-whore about it, but fuckit, that's the way it is.

Which brings me to my last point, hopefully fuel for irate reviews at the least, and insightful comments at best. I hold no illusion that it'll make a difference. Yaoi. What the fuck? You want to go ahead and a yaoi pairing story? Fine, it can be written well, like any other pairing. But if you're randomly going to make absolutely _everyone_ in the story homosexual, it goes beyond willing suspense of disbelief. There isn't any feasible way a village would allow homosexuality from individuals like Sasuke or Kakashi, who are 'genius' or prodigies. Whatever, it's your story if you write like that, and I don't read it anyway so my opinion is tremendously invalid, but I felt like ranting.

I put some other notes up there, didn't I? Right then.

(1): Have I beaten this point in just enough yet? Let me get out the corpse-flogger…


	10. Chapter 11: Back to this Again?

Author Note: So I don't have much to do, I check ffnet for decent stories around three times a day. Loser? Probably. But I swear on the spirit of my blade that I will see stories fit that Naruto and Tsunami filter if it's the last of me!

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Eleven: Back to this Again?

Disclaimer: If you've got a witty way to do a disclaimer, you write a story. If you write a story, you run out of ways to say you don't own the subject matter that the story contains. True in this case.

Uzumaki Naruto visited the Wave country, and the ninja academy therein five months ago now. In that time, the Wave ninja had grown farther from the city folk from whom they were recruited, a trade delegation moved into Konoha, and was received wonderfully this time. A meeting was scheduled for another two months following that, and it was for that meeting that Tsunami was currently preparing. She glowered, for the umpteenth time, at her reflection in the full length not-quite-mirror.

After Naruto's brief visit, Tsunami's talents in particular had bloomed and grown even stronger than they had been before. Her mirror was therefore a wooden board with chakra-held water staying stationary over it. Her reflection in that water was what made her rather angry just then.

Like most women from Wave country, Tsunami had a body designed with an eye towards physical strength and endurance. Wave had been an agricultural society for a long time before Gato's destructive influence swept over the country, so naturally women who were strong enough to work the fields with their husbands prospered, and had more children. Simple nature. It gave her a bit of an edge over most kunoichi, but it wasn't enough to put her on par with the majority of male ninja.

Of course, in her mind she had to be strong enough for Naruto. The village had to be strong enough that he would be proud of them. And in her mind, she just didn't look like a real ninja.

No matter what she wore, from the green and brown camouflage patterns, to her jet black bodysuit, nothing seemed right. Finally she sighed and settled for the sea foam green clothes and the pseudo chuunin-vest that she had worn last time Naruto visited. She shook her head at the reflection and the mirror collapsed into its bucket.

Finally she strapped her kunai holster and shuriken pouch her legs. She casually walked out of her new home, a home which contained her apartment, and two sets of three-bedroom apartments. The complex was just another step in the advancing nin-theory of Wave country. The concept was that the teams would be together constantly, with their instructor, coming to rely ever more on one another. It seemed to be working, every now and again the teams under her would start speaking as one, or finishing one another's sentences. It should have been unnerving, but it wasn't.

The two teams, already waiting for their sensei, looked up to her and she smiled at them softly. A slight nod, and chakra began saturating their bodies. Then they were off, stinging smoke, heavy with chakra, streamed from their seven bodies as they ran.

Even running as they were, the group wasn't as fast as Naruto had been when he came to Wave country the second time. However the sudden surges of chakra from their running, was felt three days after they left their home and stopped directly in front of the chuunin guards at Konoha's southern gate. Receiving curious looks from the chuunin guards, they caught sight of the orange-clad team on Tsunami's right and one of them smiled slightly.

"Ehh… Excuse me miss, may I ask the purpose of your visit?" The chuunin smiled slightly nervous, these visitors were armed, that might mean trouble.

But the woman flashed a disarming smile at him, and two reasonable facsimiles of Naruto's fox grin were beamed from six sources at him. The overwhelming level of cheer was slightly nauseating to him, so he was quite relieved when the smiles dimmed down a bit. "Yes, of course, sorry, my students and I are just a little excited to be here. Konoha is where He's from, after all… Anyway, we're here to see the Hokage, we're from the wave's new ninja academy." This prompted a vacant stare and a confused look from the Chuunin, he glanced down to a file, bearing all registered individuals who were to be allowed entry to the village.

"Oh, ah, here it is then. May I see your identification papers?" Tsunami smiled again, more quietly this time, and handed over a sheaf of documents. The Chuunin flipped through the papers and nodded contently, handing the documents back to the woman. "Everything seems to be in order then, enjoy your stay." He turned to call one of the gatekeepers to open the gates, but the pull of chakra nearby made him look in frank amazement as all seven of the informally trained ninja candidates jumped over the gate in one leap.

He sensed their seven chakra signatures as they moved quite fast through the village towards the Hokage's tower. A smirk spread over his features slowly, he pitied the Hokage right now.

Tsunade looked up from her desk where she was deciding just how to force the stupid civilians to stay in line. After all, martial law could remain effective for only so long right? Well that was irrelevant for the moment. What was of some peculiar relevancy were the seven completely unhidden chakra signatures rapidly approaching her office.

For a brief moment she thought it might be some kind of bad assassin, but the signatures were along the lines of a chuunin and six mildly experienced genin. She tried to match them to any ninja on her duty roster, but they didn't sync up completely with normal ninja, so she tossed that notion out. She wasn't supposed to meet with anyone that she knew of today so who the devil could it be?

And before she realized it they were outside her office, smiling their way through the ANBU guards posted there, and waltzing into the office in a way that reminded her of her little brother. Or maybe it was the trio in bright orange pants and vests. And then it was quiet while Tsunade and Tsunami regarded each other appraisingly. One with a broad, foxy smile, the other with a slowly developing nervous tic.

After a few minutes Tsunami stopped smiling and looked in puzzlement at the hokage. She had a suspicion that the blonde wanted to stress her into an early grave. Finally Tsunade spoke, breaking the awkward (for the wave ninja) silence. "You have half a minute to explain who you are and why you're in my office, or I'll sic those ANBU on you."

Tsunami balked at that and put her hands on her hips in a defiant gesture. "And here Naruto-kun said you'd be a nice old lady." The orange clad trio stepped forward and leveled accusing fingers at the hokage.

They spoke, oddly, in total synchronization. "Yeah! Naruto-sama said you'd listen to us this time!" Tsunade blinked at them all, confusion outweighing rage at being called old lady. Again.

"How… how exactly do you know Naruto?" Tsunade's eyes narrowed just slightly as her tone turned slightly accusatory.

Tsunami blushed at what she saw as an implication, "W-well, you see he saved my son late last year and my father the same day and a week earlier as well and I was his team's host while they were in Wave and so…" Tsunade blinked as the woman started to ramble.

_Wow, she's almost worse than Hinata… Well alright, so timid isn't in her vocabulary, but still._ Tsunade didn't give a hint as to what passed through her mind, and instead seized upon another part of what she said. "Ah, so you're the Wave contingent, why didn't you say so? Frankly I didn't guess it was you, your genin are quite advanced…" The naruto-clone team blushed and scratched the backs of their heads simultaneously. The mini-kakashi snorted while his teammates gave no outward indications that they were embarrassed.

Tsunami's continuing rant faltered as her mind dissected what the hokage had said. "Actually… these are ninja trainees… See that's the problem, we don't know any jutsu in our village and that's primarily what we lack in becoming effective ninja. That's why we're here. We've traded with other villages for chakra theory scrolls, kunai, shuriken and taijutsu techniques, and several of us have begun genjutsu work. But we have no basis for real ninjutsu experimentation."

The hokage leaned forward in her seat, curious despite herself. "Why did you approach leaf if you traded with other villages for those other things?"

Tsunami blinked again, thinking that the hokage had read the letter she sent earlier. Obviously this woman was letting others handle most of her job… Tsunami wasn't sure how she felt about that. "Uhm… Hokage-sama, we tried to trade with Konoha first, however we were rebuffed by the village's elder council. Their response said 'country rubes should stay in the fields, and leave the fighting to real warriors'. That's why we talked to the other hidden villages. They wouldn't trade jutsu with us though, so we'd given up on them until Naruto-kun showed up again…" She got a rather faraway look in her eyes as her _very_ active imagination took over.

"He was just so…

The mini-kakashi finished for her. "He was Naruto. It was kind of hard not to be dedicated to our dreams and ideals with him around." The kid was quickly on the receiving end of Tsunami's glare, but it didn't appear to faze him.

With a defeated sigh, Tsunami turned back to the Hokage. "He said that with you being the new hokage, you wouldn't let the council 'pull shit like that' anymore. Frankly I just thought that the previous hokage was annoyed at my father's recklessness still."

On the other side of the desk, Tsunade was still fuming and her fist was shaking with just barely suppressed rage. She tapped a button on her desk and a masked figure quickly came into the room. The voluptuous woman leveled a steely gaze at him, and the ANBU operative let a small shudder pass through him. "Round up every jounin instructor without a team, and six ANBU members, have them here in my office in thirty minutes, or I will be irritated. Violently, suddenly and all through the tower." Behind the mask, the ANBU paled and sprang to obey her orders. With a sickeningly sweet smile, Tsunade looked back to the Wave contingent, all of whom quickly decided that they did not want to be around an irritated Hokage. "Now then, I'll be sending along some of our best ninja with you when you leave, so lets talk about what Konoha gets out of this deal, shall we?"

Uchiha Sasuke, former ninja of Konoha. Survivor of the Uchiha Massacre. Cold-hearted bastard.

Scratch that.

Uchiha Sasuke, former ninja of Konoha; survivor of the Uchiha Massacre, loyal citizen of Konoha. The man with the golden kunai, and a whole shit-load of that stuff.

Also a gopher. Or rather he was, for some considerable time and right now he was kneading dough that would be made into his former friend's favorite dish. Money was no issue to the Uchiha, he reminded himself of this every time he looked at the pitiful sum old man Ichiraku gave him for his troubles. About a month ago, Ayame, the old man's daughter and the only other employee of Ichiraku Ramen, had begun to show Sasuke how to make the broth for the noodle-soup. A week before, he had begun to learn the rather simple dough-mixture and now he was being taught the process of bringing the dough to its proper consistency and how to slice it into the even, thin noodles that would be cooked shortly thereafter.

As usual he spent several hours at the stand, alternately ignored and berated by the old man, while Ayame was her normal supportive and helpful self. Sasuke understood largely why Naruto always ate ramen now, and he didn't think it was for flavor or price, but rather for the old man and his daughter. Even to Sasuke, who was as emotionally scarred as any veteran shinobi, they were like an uncle and cousin. Although at that precise moment, he didn't much care for his uncle.

But the day ended, as it usually did, when the dinner crowd began to appear, the old man sending Sasuke away because he wasn't quite up to a dinner crowd yet. So the raven-haired boy left, ducking out a rear exit to evade his civilian fan-girls. The ninja community did not like Sasuke, because he was a traitor, but he was the golden boy of the civilians. In an ironic twist, Sasuke genuinely wanted to befriend the pink haired girl once idolized by his teammate, but she was now pressured against being seen with him. So now that Sasuke finally made time for Sakura, she couldn't find time for him.

Sighing, slightly depressed by this particular train of thought, Sasuke walked home, keeping to alleyways and back streets all the way. He gave a meandering train of thought to what he'd do tonight… Perhaps go take in a movie, he didn't feel like being in the Uchiha compound for a while yet. Yes. A movie sounded good.

He ducked and wove through streets, using all the speed and stealth he'd gained as a ninja, at least, as much as he could without active chakra use. He didn't pay much mind to the girl he passed who stared straight forward, whispering and not blinking.

Yamanaka Ino was a decent shinobi, a better interrogator, but most of all, she would've made a good politician. She had been a potent gossiper before, but after she got to chuunin rank in the last exam (hosted by the Grass at the time), she lost all her social influence. That didn't mean she couldn't tell which way the wind was blowing though, and she could sense where the ninja were targeting their anger at no longer being accepted by the civilians.

So it was Yamanaka Ino who pressured Sakura most into staying away from Sasuke, poisoning her mind as much as she could against the boy. Sure, once she'd been among his most ardent supporters, but needs must when politics drive. The appearance of her rather coldhearted manner caused Shikamaru and Chouji to quickly and suddenly reassess their friendship with her.

But others of the rookie nine and team Gai stayed close to her, and those that did she worked to poison them as well against one who numbered among them. And it wasn't hard to convince Shino or Kiba that he was a worthless, evil man. Strangely, Hinata fervently agreed with her, which might also have altered Kiba's stance somewhat.

Ah yes, Kiba had something of an interest in the once-timid genin, although now he was trying to get her interested in him, rather than simply trying to be strong enough to protect her. Perhaps the new Hinata seemed a little more like Shino than Kiba would've liked, but she made up for it in strength, in Kiba's more animal mind.

Sakura herself was still learning at a fevered pace from her mentor, who had actual time to teach now that she didn't get caught up in paperwork. She was presently learning the more practical C and B ranked healing jutsu, those used by chuunin in actual combat. Tsunade had told her student during one session, that she would not be teaching Sakura her earth-shattering strength until years into her training. While at first this disheartened the pink-haired girl, she came to acknowledge later that she probably wasn't mature enough to use it wisely.

After all, she had thought to herself,Tsunade herself wasn't normally mature enough about her strength, and she had created the technique. She indulged in a very covert giggle the next time she saw Tsunade belt someone out of the room.

However, despite her success at the training, Haruno Sakura was not really a happy girl. No matter what she tried, she could not seem to get away enough to see Sasuke, and Sasuke seemed content enough to let her keep her good name in the shinobi world. And perhaps worse than that, was the ever widening rift between civilian and ninja populations. It was a harsh shock to the girl who had always believed Konoha to be a fairly cohesive society, and she truly did not enjoy the way it was now.

Sakura reminisced over most of these facts as she joined the dinner crowd at Ichiraku Ramen. She sighed heavily, noticing the tension from the civilian customers seated near her, and ate her noodles doing her best to ignore it.

As she walked home later that evening, she noticed a dog running from its owner, down the street.

Tsunami lay calmly in the hotel room, unable to sleep. It just didn't feel right not being around her teams. A timid knock came from the door and she moved gracefully towards it, sweeping the door open to reveal the six little children she'd just been thinking of. Their expressions were more troubled than she felt her own was and she quickly pulled them all inside.

"Now what's wrong?" She asked the trainees, who shuffled around, half-guiltily under her scrutiny.

The Naruto-clones spoke together. "We couldn't sleep… Something Very Bad is coming." Tsunami's brow furrowed in confusion until the mini-Kakashi spoke.

"It is Uzumaki-sama, but at the same time…" his female teammate picked up when he trailed off. "It isn't him as we know him."

Tsunami frowned at that, pushed away her concern and set about calming and soothing her students. Two hours later they were sleeping peacefully, huddled together in their teams as if seeking support in bad dreams. She pulled her own blanket down and went to sleep on the floor nearby, and as soon as sleep claimed her, she too realized that Something Very Bad was coming.

But Uzumaki Naruto would be safe, she believed that. He would be safe, and he would come back to her, because her dreams said so.

End A Demon's Dream Chapter Eleven: Back to this Again?

Author Note: Posting this together with twelve.


	11. Chapter 12: Something Very Bad

Author's Note: The chapter people kept guessing about… I hope its enjoyed.

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Twelve: Something Very Bad

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

As a ninja, one must learn to dismiss the intrinsic similarities one has to other humans. As a being that was once human, people lose any value they might have had. But Uzumaki Naruto writes the rules for beings that can't be human, and he still held the idea that people had meaning. Maybe some people needed killing, but death for death's sake was wrong. Uzumaki Naruto believed this.

Naruto and Kyuubi had lost their tenuous grip on their physical bodies when the prince ejected them from Uchuugakure. And so for the moment they hung in the air, mere clouds of sparkling blue and red chakra, knowing what they had to do for the sake of their insanity.

They had to go somewhere specific to do it, but they had no idea where they were. For mortal beings this would be an issue, but they were Uzumaki Naruto, they were vast, infinite perhaps. They became more, the two clouds of chakra shining brighter, until they were two stars that would have been blinding for anyone still sane to see. Then the stars moved, and simply were once more, in two different places. They made bodies and hid their massive energies within themselves, becoming less and less, and then setting out.

Fifteen years ago, the demon fox spent a week bearing down on a village. Then as now, infants sobbed, crying uncontrollably for the entirety of the week, and nothing could be done to console them. They thrashed and cried violently until they wore themselves into exhaustion. Some died. Dogs barked and whined, and many ran from their homes.

The children and the adults were plagued with nightmares, assaulting images of horror that drove sleep from many, and brought delight to a few. Like fifteen years ago, ninja and civilian alike were lured by a siren call, driven by an irresistible urge to return to the hell their home was becoming.

During the week, there was less and less activity, next to no movement. Like being paralyzed with killing intent. But unlike fifteen years ago, the being approaching gave no sign of itself, it swung no tails, did not make tidal waves or send mountains crashing down. And yet Forces beyond understanding of living things knew that the destruction this time would be worse. It would be total and complete, terrible and devastating, and those Forces weren't being quiet about what they knew.

Amid the drudgery of the average people and the glee of a select few, there were the handful who stared with blind, unblinking eyes. They knew what was coming, and they knew it was a bad thing. The handful of sensitives told people that Something Very Bad would happen, and believed it with all their hearts, but they couldn't leave their village, because Forces wanted them to stay, and enjoy the show.

And on the second day the storm started. Lightning and thunder crashed in the sky, and heavy black clouds sent the village into perpetual night. The night fueled exhaustion, the dreams darkened the skies ever more, the darkness made the rains hammer away the will to do anything but sit inside.

Thus, it was considered a mercy to the handful of people who knew it would happen. Minds too burned up with the impending doom, and the knowledge they could save no one, not even themselves. Relief swept over them when the apocalypse finally came.

The end of their world was the stuff of nightmares, but not the nightmares they'd suffered. Kyuubi and Naruto stood at opposite edges of the village, and let their grips on the bodies break as they willed themselves to become more, and more still. Stunning lines of crimson and azure flecked with shining lights swarmed around the whole of the village, rising into a twisting, two lined spiral that domed in and enclosed their reality.

And finally freed of the eternal night and the horrors in their sleep, the villagers woke to terrifying reality, they screamed and ran from the shining light that drew ever closer, slowly consuming what was in its way. But no matter the direction they ran, the dome drew ever closer towards them, slow, inexorable, inescapable. The presences in the energies called out to the population, speaking with voices that held no malice and no hate. And while they spoke the energies halted their maelstrom of death.

"**You, who sit now so frightened. **_So feeble. You know us, though you do not remember it._** We are Beings now, no more mere humans to be looked upon my mortal fools. **_We bear no ill will to you, and would just as soon have left you to be…_"

A part of the crowd called out "Then why! Why do this?"

"**We do this,**_ because we must._" Blue and red began to swirl closer, it touched a living limb, and the thing attached to it could no more move that it would in death. The swirls drew ever closer and a fool ninja tried to trade places with an object outside the barrier, the Beings paused and sent their chakra into the ninja, whom they had plucked from the unreality of his jump. The chakra burned into his body, scouring away what was once his own system, and Demon chakra supplanted it, the body saturated with vile energies and the body could no longer assert that it was as real as the Beings, and disappeared like any construct made of chakra would.

And then they moved again, until a voice called out. "At least tell us who is going to kill us!" Again this made the two stop. The red glowed and the harsh voice spoke. "**I am Kyuubi.**" It said, a clear invitation for the other to speak. The blue glowed and the ethereal, wispy voice spoke. "_I am Naruto._"

They spoke together, resuming their advance. "**We have been questioning who and what we are.**_ We are salvation and damnation to life that does not live. _**We are that what changes the game to be played. **_We are a solution. _**And a new series of problems, **_for us and everyone else._" They took a moment as their destruction continued, things disappearing into the cloud and not emerging. "_We are reluctantly the same._** And you will serve our differences. **_For as mighty as we are like this, _**when we are unrestrained we are vast, **_we contain mysteries. _**Fish.**" Kyuubi gave his conclusion.

The top of the dome sparked and burned, impossibly thin lines of chakra stretched down and snatched up a man, purple energy quickly consuming him as he spoke in another voice. "WE DO THIS, BECAUSE THERE IS NO NEED. YOU DIE SO THAT SOMETHING NEW AND WONDERFUL CAN BE, REJOICE IN THAT. AND MORE THAN ANYTHING, WHAT WE ARE AND WHY WE DO THIS IS UZUMAKI NARUTO." The body glowed more fiercely and the wall of death closed in, ignoring the screams and pathetic cries for mercy.

And then the storm was over, and the village was totally intact, all the life once there lay where it fell. Chakra coils stripped of all their burning life, their once human chakra and souls having been drained into the infernal mass that destroyed them. Their minds, their very personalities and beliefs were wiped away, scoured and removed to be never recovered.

The corpses of animals, babes, men and women and children lay still, the demon-fire that had overwhelmed them still making its ominous glow from their corpses. Of the fires, and the two men touched by the chakra intentionally, there was no sign. As if they had never been.

Dawn broke for the first time in a week, and no human eye could look upon it to be thankful for the relent. Forces beyond understanding, who had watched the moment eagerly, now sat to wait out the repercussions, and looked upon another village where dreams and nightmares waxed potent and common.

The Forces considered, for the merest of moments, that perhaps there was more that would happen than they believed, or had wished for.

No one saw Kyuubi or Naruto after that, but if one looked hard enough, they might see a man walking, dumbly through the forest, the purple light that bathed him seeming the only thing about him that lived. His eyes, dead, his mouth moved but made no sounds, and where he went. And all around him the horrible presence of Something Very Bad whispered in a small, frightened voice 'what have I done?'

End A Demon's Dream Chapter Twelve: Something Very Bad

Author Note: It's a short chapter, and my writing was different in it I think. But I always get Simon Green-ish when I feel like being epic and important. Fish. Read, review, please? Oh, and no I won't tell you what they did.

THE APOCOLYPSE! Whao… that chapter just shorted out my mind. I mean… wow. It was like everything I knew and thought was just shredded to pieces. Hehehehe FISH

- Most likely stated by my beta.


	12. Chapter 13: Guilt, and subjective evil

1Author note: The Furious One hereby apologizes to all his readers for having been a fucktard and stuck up to boot. We is promise to write more now, yeah.

Aidis: I hate you all. Die.

Islagatt: Aidis, that is decidedly unyouthful.

A Demon's Dream

Chapter Thirteen: Guilt, and the Subjective Evil

I do not own Naruto

Konoha was not an old village. As far as the other villages went, centuries into the past, Konoha was not even two hundred years old, having really had only four kage in its time (the Yondaime's reign was such a brief footnote, that it scarcely seems chronologically important). Nonetheless, it was a power to be reckoned with in its heyday, and as such, the guards of the four gates had witnessed many strange things in their time.

There was actually a chronicle, each gate kept one, of who and what came through them, so that the new gatekeepers could benefit from the experiences and strangeness of their predecessors. For example, the northern gate had a record of a team of ninjas riding summoned beasts into Konoha (not terribly odd but for the fact that one had been a rather imposing lizard-like being and another had been a slug). There had been another record of a guard on the east gate admitting a christian missionary, only to have him chased out of town less than three hours later.

Stories of what went through the gates were numerous and varied, but none of them quite compared to what was now approaching the western gate to Konohagakure no Sato.

What approached was not a burning spark of angry red or blue light, was not an undeniable wall of debatably evil energy, it was instead, an average ninja, jounin if the vest were an indication. His hitai-ate was slightly odd from the current distance, because every time the guards looked at it, the forehead protector seemed to writhe and shift, as if desperate to escape identification. It was further odd that the hitai ate was not tied to his head, shredded remains of cloth flapped about in a frenzied manner while the metal plate stuck fast to the ninja's head, more like it'd been pounded into it. Of course there were stranger and more noticeable aspects about the ninja, such as the fact that he seemed to be moving rather like a puppet, limbs awkward and jerky. Or perhaps the fact that he had black, empty eyes. Maybe it was the potent aura of concentrated purple energy that surrounded him for seemingly no reason and what seemed to move before he did.

Yeah, probably the purple chakra.

It was the opinion of the guards of Konoha's gate that things approaching were to be treated uniformly, all in a similar manner, and with a certain procedure. Sometimes, they decided as the figure jerked and jeered closer towards the gate, procedure had to give way to common sense. That and there was the small matter of the man raising a hand, palm open towards the gate when he was still meters away, and throwing it open with a wave of invisible but palpable energy.

The disorienting feeling of the not-quite-human chakra also left the guards retching and incapacitated on the ground.

-

Along the streets the figure walked, flanked on either side by a squad of nervously twitching ANBU. The ANBU had been surrounding the target since it had arrived in Konoha, tracking the creature but at the same time unable to do anything about its presence. Honestly what it was had completely eluded the ANBU forces and the squad of jounin tailing the thing.

It's chakra didn't feel human, that was for sure, and it most definitely was not a demon, for it hadn't actually harmed anything yet. It lacked the Kyuubi's malevolence, and seemed to carry its own air of emotions that hovered in the purple chakra surrounding and preceding it. However, the lack of hostile intent meant little against the fact that its desires were totally unknown, and the direction of its march was somewhat difficult to perceive as well, at times it went this way, and other times that way, it had passed by training ground twenty seven and the old, abandoned section of Konoha. It had moved by the repaired arena and was presently making way for the Hokage tower at its own slow, purposeful twitch.

Tsunade had been alerted as soon as the being had made its way through the gate, she had been looking through sheaf upon sheaf of documents searching for any ideas about what the being might be, and had found nothing. There were simply no documents that seemed to pertain to this particular type of being, which could only suggest that it was something either far older than humanity that had not yet reared its head, or something new, and intimidating. She wasn't entirely sure which one she preferred.

But there was no more time for her to look for information, she had to go out and confront the entity ambling through her streets and do whatever she could to keep her ninja and her civilians safe. The order had already gone out to begin evacuating the civilians (herding the cattle, depending on who you asked), and with them went the majority of the genin. The wave ninja were supposed to have left three days prior but they hadn't and now, they were still waiting, this time to find out what the new thing was.

And so, Tsunade stepped out into the street, staring down the approaching man, the ANBU retreated to the rooftops, most readying jutsu or weapons and waiting for the Hokage's signal. The Godaime glared coolly at the still-advancing man and spoke with all the authority and dignity she could muster, if she shook just a bit, the ANBU decided that they didn't notice.

"HALT! State your business with the leaf!" The jerking motions paused, as the body lifted itself to stand straight and regarded the Hokage without its eyes. "If you don't comp-" her threat was cut off by no fewer than four voices.

The first voice was deep and strong. "**Old hag.**" The second, joining the first a half second later was bright, content perhaps "_Tsunade_" The third voice came thin and raspy from the body itself, blood spattered, black and crusted from its mouth when it spoke. "Hokage-sama…"

The fourth voice was familiar, quiet but dominating the others while they still faded from away, it was powerful, and yet distracted, it was a voice that wasn't entirely human anymore, but was far closer to it than the other three. "Obaa-chan…" the other three voices quickly echoed the first, prompting nothing but abject confusion from the Hokage. That sounded almost like Naruto's voice, but it couldn't be...

"Who are you! What do you want with Konoha? And-" she was once again cut-off as the third voice gave a strangled cry of pain and misery. The man was collapsing to the ground as the purple chakra surged and swayed around him, its potency quickly overwhelming the leaf ninja with sheer alienness. While they were all still reeling from the impact and while the chakra was surging and railing against the bond of the body, another person arrived, rather unnoticed by most of the ninja present as the pressure of the foreign chakra increased.

The power being created was literally making the atmosphere heavier, bringing the team of jounin to their knees and then driving them completely to the ground. The ANBU kept their footing through nothing but abject determination, and the Hokage stood staring at the body. Totally unaffected, the newcomer watched with rapt attention.

"Naruto-kun…"

The body smoldered, sizzled, flesh liquefied and ran, while more purple chakra burst free by forcing the flesh to split and burst into geysers of black, unhealthy blood. The purple chakra surged, and then retreated once more, falling into the ruined body, leaving many to believe that the strange jounin was simply dead. Then the purple drifted up, seemingly unattached to the body that restrained it, drifting upwards into a cloud, sparks of red and blue flying from the central mass.

There was no pressure on the air anymore, the ninja about were still rooted in place though watching the entity hover for moments more. Most stood with their attention fixed completely on the cloud that hovered ominously in place, but a few (the hokage among them) noticed now the presence of the ninja woman standing beside the Hokage. However, as much as she wanted to, Tsunade couldn't turn to ask what she was doing here and risk taking her eyes off the floating cloud of chakra. She was actually considering doing just that when the cloud suddenly became infinitely more, not an oppressive feeling, rather, it was as if it was just letting the people know it existed, albeit it a rather forceful and vehement manner.

Before anyone could be properly impressed or afraid of the power suddenly on display, there was an explosion and thoroughly underwhelming 'phut' sound while the chakra cloud vanished, leaving behind a short, blonde, orange-jumpsuit-clad genin in its place. Uzumaki Naruto stood there, looking proud and about as happy as he ever got, his fists placed on his hips in a cavalier manner while he beamed the broadest grin he possibly could. The previous Naruto, the one who had lived in the village before, had exuded an aura that inspired others when he was confident or determined. Naruto of now however radiated raw power in a way that made you just kind of want to bask in it for a while. For a long moment there was silence, stunned for the most part, awkward for Naruto, and proud for Tsunami.

As the moment stretched longer, and longer still Naruto's smile dropped away and he began looking about in a confused manner, he glanced to the jounin behind him and the ANBU on the rooftops on either side, and then finally his eyes looked to Tsunade herself, standing before him with an expression of uncomprehending shock.

Apparently fed up with the silence, Naruto crossed his arms over his chest and glared about him. "What?"

----------------

Tsunade stared straight ahead, the swirling mist of airborne chakra existed without any being apparently maintaining it, as if it were a free-floating chakra system that simply decided to exist. That couldn't possibly be, and it had just hauled itself out of a body that she was very sure had been dead to start with, again acting as if it hadn't needed the body at all and was possessing it.

As far as the Hokage knew, only ghosts went about possessing random bodies, but the typical concept was that the bodies had to be alive for the ghost to use them. This was closer to something manipulating a zombie, like some kind of parasite. Then again, what kind of parasite would exist as a mass of chakra without need of an actual body, seemingly able to replicate infinitely without fuel. Had the body's life force been fuel? Then everyone surrounding was at risk, she would have to be ready to defend everyone there, even though she had no idea what she could do to that.

A part of her tensed, the chakra was growing rapidly, it was going to attack and infect another host body! But wait, if that was the case, then why was it shrinking? Before Tsunade could come up with a jutsu that would even affect the cloud, there was an explosive sound, an underwhelming noise and a sight she hadn't seen in seven months.

Naruto? Was that why Tsunami was here? Was it really Naruto? Hadn't he said that he'd be gone for a long time? Why was he back so soon when Jiraiya had planned to take him for three years, how did he get so strong, what was he now that he could exist without a body? Why was he suddenly looking indignant?

"What?" he said in an almost accusing voice.

Tsunade growled and flicked him in the forehead. "Idiot! Don't ruin the moment!" She noticed her finger had actually stopped when it touched his head, with no momentum or force imparted to the blonde. That was disturbing, but the fact he didn't seem to notice was a bit more so. He reached behind his head and scratched absently, a fierce blush overtaking his features.

"Sorry," was all he answered with. Seeing that the simple apology wouldn't cut it, Tsunade was imploring him to continue (read: she was cracking her knuckles loudly, in spite of the fact her flick had done nothing, she was sure a punch would affect him). "Uhm… I lost Yondaime's seal?" There was a widening of eyes and a gasp before him. "It's no issue though, Kyuubi is long since dead. Kyuubi, the spirit sealed in me, and Naruto, the spirit of what I would have been without Kyuubi no Kitsune, are sorta merged, more or less… But they did things I didn't want them to, so obviously I'm not them, so I'm just Uzumaki Naruto, me." (Aidis:1)

Tsunade rolled this idea over in her head and was about to ask another question when the other ninja could apparently no longer contain herself. Tsunami launched forward at a very surprised Naruto, and glomped onto him. There was a loud cracking sound that Tsunade _hoped_ was Naruto's ribs. "NarutosamaNarutosamaImsogladyourealiveIvebeenwaitingsolongforyouwitheveryoneelsefromwavewevebeenhopingyoudcomebacktousandnowyourbackand!" There was an overall, collectively confused blink from the ANBU, hokage, and jounin. Tsunade added a sweatdrop moments later and sent one of the ANBU squads to cancel the evacuation order, it made her pause to think that the village had to suffer two such orders within one year, and never had such a thing occurred before. Was Konohagakure no Sato already in its twilight?

"Ts-tsu na mi -chan… my… ribs…" the little blonde squeaked from beneath an aggressively devoted ninja woman. Tsunami gasped, bashing herself internally that she had hurt the precious Naruto-sama, and extricated herself from him, her face a bright pink normally reserved for Hinata and close encounters of the jinchuuriki kind. Naruto stood himself back up with a smile, purple chakra leaking around his midsection whilst his body righted itself. "Ah, better… Ascension is good for the body." (1)

Tsunade gave him an incredulous look, "ascension?" It seemed a pompous thing to say, ascension, one typically reserved that particular verb for deities and near-deities becoming such.

Apparently unconcerned by the question, Naruto scratched the back of his head for a minute and couldn't seem to look at Tsunami without blushing, cute in an impossibly frustrating sort of way. He looked back to the hokage and absently scratched the back of his head. "Ah… Why don't we um… talk about this in your office. Nice to be back and all but it'll be raining soon." He pointed up at the clear sky as it started to cloud over, the dark-ish condensation rolling in faster than it really should have.

Whether Tsunade was impressed by his display or not she wouldn't show, she simply turned and began hopping away across rooftops towards her office. Naruto, on the other hand, remembered something he learned when he was more human, and flashed Tsunami a grin that made her chest flutter. Then he exploded from the spot he stood upon with a flash of golden chakra.

Tsunami stared after him for as long as it took to process what he had done. In the nanoseconds her accelerated mind took to realize it, she bolted from where she stood, her chakra-saturated blur chasing after his own towards the Hokage tower. Though it took the pair less than a minute to reach the Hokage tower, it allowed Tsunami a moment to reflect on some of the changes that had overtaken Naruto, and herself.

First of all she'd recognized him as being him because of his chakra, somehow she just knew it was him, she wasn't adept at identifying chakra signatures or any such thing, but there was the not-quite-demonic taint to his presence. Then there was the issue of his having allowed both his souls full presence to exist simultaneously. Humans and demons only have one soul, but he had two, what did that make him? He'd been human for fifteen years, was he now something else? Perhaps that was what he wanted to discuss upon reaching the hokage tower. The pair gracefully stopped just before the oaken doors to the tallest tower in Konoha, there weren't any guards here so they walked into the building, utterly unopposed.

---------------------

When they reached Tsunade's office she did two things, one was to punch Naruto in the face and send him into a wall in the process, and the second was to hug him, almost crying while Naruto kind of stiffened uncomfortably. Tsunami was almost jealous when she saw the type of affection this hug represented, then she smiled at the pair, missing Naruto's apparent unease. The blonde pushed down the merely human feeling in the back of Naruto's mind and hugged Tsunade back, an awkward smile slowly forcing its way over his features.

Naruto wasn't human anymore, but he remembered his humanity, it compelled him every now and again in fickle, human situations. Like right now. He murmured quietly to his adoptive… Tsunade "I'm back, Baa-chan."

She choked back a laugh, only partially successful while her tears streamed down her face. Since Dan, she hadn't been an emotional woman, but Naruto was her adoptive… something, and he was such a sap too! Reining herself in she muttered back to him "Welcome back," and hugged him again.

They stayed like that for a few minutes, one composing herself and allowing the rare moment of happiness, the other sorting himself out about this place and his condition with his leader and variable role female figure. When Tsunade had composed herself, she parted from him, and walked back towards her desk, she settled into her chair and motioned towards the other two chairs. This was obviously not an invitation, and the other two in the room quickly sat in the offered chairs, which were not quite as plush and luxuriant as the hokage's- though by no means uncomfortable.

Naruto took note that there were no papers on her desk anymore and rose an eyebrow inquisitively. He looked back to the woman and was about to ask when her gaze locked on him and he kept his mouth shut. Tsunade nodded at him and spoke. "Thank you for returning so quickly, I take it you were able to achieve what you set out to do?" He nodded, and she continued. "Good. Since your departure, things have changed in Konoha, I think you'll like how it is here now, but I'll tell you about it later. Now you will tell me everything that happened after your departure from Tsunami-san's house. And you will not leave anything out."

Naruto nodded, feeling distantly menaced, and began the story. "Well… Naruto was kind of in a haze when he left Tsunami's house. He was-"

"You don't have to speak in third person, you're not writing a story." Tsunade interrupted him.

Naruto eyed her strangely before answering. "I'm not speaking in third person, I'm not that Naruto, that was Naruto my human soul." Tsunade twitched slightly but relented and let him continue. "Anyway, by that time my… Naruto's…" he faltered, debating internally, then he figured it out. "By that time Uzumaki Naruto's body had already been so saturated by demonic chakra that its chakra pathways would only accept it, given that the inner coils had already been tainted, it wasn't hard to do, the body was essentially demonic. However, Naruto was still human in soul, he hadn't discarded his humanity yet, so Kyuubi, who was no longer a demon, created an illusion for him.

"For the entire day, Naruto was forced to witness every positive and negative event in his life, emotions amplified infinitely so that they burned out. Of course they didn't, and eventually the memories blended together and pushed him past where he'd been, where any human was really meant to go. He broke and shattered at that moment, Kyuubi was panicking, and the death god came and destroyed the seal, it no longer applied to Uzumaki Naruto because he was no longer the creature initially used in the sealing. Kyuubi and Naruto split apart, and I was vaguely defined at that point.

"You look confused, alright I'll explain it again then. Kyuubi and Naruto are only souls, however they also both have a nature in mere concept, platonic ideal, as such they couldn't _not_ exist, so they were essentially unlimited energy. That and since they weren't human or demon, they defied classification, not being classified, rules stopped working with them. Again you look confused. The world runs on basic, fundamental rules. The rules are impossible to break but if there aren't any rules to you, then there's no limit to what a being can do. If that's not being ascended I don't have a concept for what is.

"Anyway, Kyuubi and Naruto, despite being unlimited, were incomplete when they were separate, and they were separate because they were sharing only one mind at the time, they needed to separate their personas so they could be one body again and I could exist." He paused, thinking again, a distant whispering in his mind coming from the bickering essences that he had been. "They made bodies to further the sense that they were different from one another, I don't mean like shadow clones, I mean they actually compressed and twisted chakra around until they became human bodies, and then they possessed them.

"From where they were in the forest, they walked, trying to talk _to_ each other instead of for each other, and that was a chore believe me. They got to a village, hidden star…" He paused slightly, but pressed on. "Met with the village's leader, and were sent on their way, he wouldn't let them stay there I guess. They were in the woods for months again, just walking, and then they found another village, ruled by Beings, the village of the hidden cosmos. Cosmos is a strange village and some of the things are scary, mentally scarring. Like a Maito Gai clone dipped in neon tie-die and with an afro instead of a bowl cut." He let his audience shiver as they visualized the man, and then pressed on.

"Kyuubi and Naruto met with their leader, the Prince, who came from the same realm Kyuubi no Kitsune did. For the record, Kyuubi calls it the Platonic dimension, based on an old philosophy… Anyway, the Prince told them that he, and many other Platonic dimension Beings knew that they were alive, and rewriting rules, they wanted to see what would happen by our work. Some didn't want to see what would happen, so he told them that they should hurry up. Then he sent them away, destroying the bodies they had made in the process.

"Looking back on it now, it took them a month to figure out something that would be so terrible that it would split their mind in twain. Finally they found something, and they left… to…" He looked over at the other woman in the room. "Tsunami-chan, could you tell her? It's hard to say…" Tsunami blinked at him but slowly nodded and put a calming hand on his shoulder.

"Of course Naruto-kun… Tsunade-sama, with your leave?" the blonde kage nodded, dumbfounded by the entire story so far. "Thank you. Naruto and Kyuubi went to the village of hidden stars, and destroyed it, devoured the souls of every living thing within the village or beyond it. They burned out their chakra coils and erased their minds, nothing was left alive, but nothing was destroyed."

On her feet instantly, Tsunade faced the wave-woman. "What! How can you know any of this? You were here!" Tsunami nodded to her.

"I was, but I kept having visions until we felt resonance with Naruto-sama's chakra. He is wave's spirit, and when he disappeared we felt it, that brought Naruto back, and we felt that too. Am I right, Naruto-sama?"

Naruto gave a barely perceptible nod. "Yeah… Kyuubi and Naruto did it, I didn't want to, I wouldn't do that kind of thing. There was no reason for it, if the people of hoshigakure did something –malign or not doesn't matter- then maybe I'd understand but they knew that there wasn't any reason for them to do it. But I'm here now, and they won't get to do something like it again." He declared the last with a firm resolve in his voice.

There was a long silence in the room, as Tsunade thought about what she had heard, and Tsunami tried to comfort Naruto through her presence. For his part, Naruto let his sclera (2) flash to one red and one blue, shine brightly and then fade away to human white. He looked back up to Tsunami appreciatively and she smiled back at him.

Apparently reaching a decision, Tsunade gave a slight nod. "Well then… Naruto… why don't you go rest for a bit-

"I don't need rest anymore Baa-chan, I'm limitless, remember?"

Tsunade twitched uneasily and glowered at him once more. "Then go talk around the village for a while… I'm sure Sakura would be happy to see you." The sour looks on both of their faces didn't go unnoticed by the Hokage, but she pressed on. "Some of your other friends have missed you too. Stay here until the villagers are all returned, and then you can head out to meet with them… I'll go and help out with the explanations." She got up and walked away, looking for an excuse to leave the two together.

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Naruto looked over Tsunami when he was sure Tsunade was gone and gave her a smile. "Ishougakure no Sato? Fairly clever Tsunami-chan. But you know you can't be allowed to have a ninja village in the way other countries do." She looked at him strangely and he gave her a fox-grin.

"How did you…?" she began.

Naruto shrugged dismissively. "Just did. My supposition is that your entire ninja crew are drawing off of demonic chakra, it makes you all an open book to me… Well that's what I think at least. Or maybe I just had my own vision, eh?" She had the decency to blush at that.

"Well… at least its you." She smiled a bit as she said that, drawing a blank stare from Naruto. "If someone can read my innermost thoughts without any apparent effort, I'd rather it be someone who… well…"

Naruto smiled slightly. "Someone who you want to share your innermost thoughts with anyway?"

She smacked him upside the head. "Not what I was gonna say! I was about to say someone who won't use it with meanness in mind." He smiled at her and leaned back in his chair, letting his eyes close. "Tired?"

He shook his head, then shrugged. "Who knows, I really don't know how any of this situation works anyway, and I don't know if my friends' opinion matters to me anyway… I rather gave up on humans when I gave up humanity." She gave a small, sad nod, thinking she had no chance with him now. "'Course, the people of wave aren't human. The nin at least. I feel a kind of draw towards them, like that's where I belong, ever feel something like that, Tsunami-chan?" She blushed a bit, and nodded.

"Why can't we be a village like normal ninja?" She asked quietly.

Glancing back at her, he lifted his own head for just a moment, as if to make sure he understood her. Then he shook his head and sank back. "You'll figure it out in due time Tsunami-chan. I'm sure of it." That wasn't the answer she wanted, and being Tsunami, she always had a fallback option when things didn't go her way. This particular scene prompted backup plan three-delta-one.

Tsunami pouted and huffily leaned back against her chair, decidedly not talking to Naruto.

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End Chapter Thirteen: Guilt, and the Subjective Evil

1: Keep reading, the whole ascension thing is explained. I can't fathom fiction readers being offended by the word's use, but if it does then understand I didn't mean it in any religious sense.

2: Sclera is the white of the eye. I just feel like using more correct terminology. Apologies to people who already know this.

Aidis 1: Hehehe…. Confusing much? XD

Author Note: So the Furious One is really sorry to everyone who reads this story. Islagatt promises to write more for this story. Many stories have writers who have put in more time and effort, written better and gotten fewer reviews. So I'm not gonna bitch about reviews anymore, and I'm not gonna make demands, I'm just gonna write the best stuff I can, and hope that you all like it enough to review, Yeah. So… Abaiyo, minna-san.

Aidis: Islagatt's not bitchen about reviews any more but his beta damn sure is! REVIEW YOU BASTARDS! IF YOU READ THIS CHAPTER THAN YOU HAVE AN **OBLIGATION** TO FREAKIN REVIEW! If you don't... well I suggest not falling asleep for as long a period a you can manage. You never know if you'll wake up again.

Islagatt: blink wow… defensive isn't he?


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